Guide to Contemporary Ballet and Dance

To understand the contemporary style, we must first understand classical ballet. The movements of classical ballet primarily favour pointed feet, externally-rotated legs and upright, elongated lines of the body. Additionally, works in the classical tradition are mostly set to classical music and feature dramatic narrative plots (often inspired by myths, folk tales or classic 18th or 19th-century literature), period costumes or tutus and grand stage settings. Think of the quintessential classical ballet Swan Lake and the iconic image of the Swan Princess on pointe, in pointe shoes and a classic white tutu.  The choreography is entirely balletic including classical steps such as arabesques, jetés and fouettés; the ballet is set to Tchaikovsky’s sublime music, and the corps de ballet perform in symmetrical formations usually against a majestic palace setting. 

In contrast, contemporary choreography might include movements where the feet are flexed and in parallel, with the body moving in more fluid or angular shapes, and the dancers wearing flat canvas ballet shoes or sometimes no shoes at all. Take as an example Crystal Pite’s The Statement. Pite's movements are very far from the pointed feet and elongated lines of Swan Lake; the quality is more fluid and naturalistic in order to articulate the spoken word dialogue that the choreography is set to. Notice too, how The Statement is staged in the more familiar pedestrian setting of a boardroom, while the dancers’ costumes could have come from everyday wardrobes.  

Some contemporary choreographers may choose to retain balletic movement conventions while staging their choreography in more abstract settings. Wayne McGregor’s Chroma for example maintains some balletic choreography, but it is inflected with a contemporary flavour: the dancer performs a pirouette with a flexed foot or holds an off-centred arabesque. Balletic shapes are deconstructed, modified and extended even further. McGregor’s genre-defying ballet has no narrative, but uses dynamic movements to explore the drama of the human body. Chroma is also set to a non-traditional music choice: Joby Talbot’s orchestral arrangement of music by American rock band The White Stripes.  

There are also contemporary choreographers who stick closely to balletic movement conventions, and yet, we would define them as ‘contemporary’ due to the settings and costuming of their works. Royal Ballet First Soloist Valentino Zucchetti’s Prima for instance, features intricate choreography en pointe that is heavily balletic, and is set to classical music (Camille Saint-Saëns’ third violin concerto). But its stark staging, lack of narrative and modern costuming make it more of a contemporary ballet than a classical one!  

It is important to understand that there is no black-and-white definition of contemporary ballet or dance, and that many factors help to define a work as contemporary: movement quality, staging, costuming, music, and narrative (or lack thereof).  

The origins of the contemporary style of ballet and dance can be traced back to the late 19th century, to modern dance artists such as Isadora Duncan. Often considered the mother of modern dance, she championed a style of dance that abandoned pointe shoes and ballet’s strict vocabulary in favour of freer, more natural movement.  

Duncan paved the way for such future 20th-century pioneers of modern dance as Martha Graham, Lester Horton, José Limón, Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Pina Bausch and Marie Rambert. These choreographers all created their own styles of movement, and codified their techniques, which are still taught, practiced and performed today. Some of these styles were more avant-garde than others, but they share the key feature of rejecting balletic norms. Contemporary dance as we know it today evolved from these creators of modern dance, and the two genres are closely related. 

Meanwhile, in New York, George Balanchine was creating a new ‘neoclassical’ style of ballet – one that drew clearly on the classical vocabulary, but featured greater dynamism and abstraction. Considered the father of American ballet, he took what he learnt from his training at the Imperial Ballet School of St Petersburg and his early career with the Ballets Russes and infused it with what inspired him from Hollywood and on Broadway. His neoclassical style of contemporary ballet often featured ballet steps performed with extreme speed and musicality and often in abstract settings. 

Other key choreographers include Jerome Robbins, Roland Petit, William Forsythe, Jiří Kylián, Hans Van Manen, Glen Tetley, Maurice Béjart and Twyla Tharp. There are many companies today that continue the legacy of these choreographers, such as Nederlands Dans Theater, New York City Ballet, Rambert Dance, among others.  

The Royal Ballet has staged many contemporary works in recent history, including those of Wayne McGregor, Christopher Wheeldon, Crystal Pite, Pam Tanowitz, Cathy Marston, Kyle Abraham and Valentino Zucchetti. Read on to find out more about each choreographer.  

Wayne McGregor is The Royal Ballet’s Resident Choreographer, a post he has been in since 2006. Trained at the José Limon School, he was the Company’s first Resident Choreographer from a contemporary dance background, and was awarded a knighthood in 2024. A master collaborator, he has transformed dance in the 21st-century by pushing the boundaries of ballet. He draws on a wide range of influences, from literature and fine art to science and technology, working with creatives that span the full breadth of contemporary human expression. Key works of McGregor’s for The Royal Ballet include the short works Chroma – he was appointed in his current role shortly after its premiere – Limen and Infra, and the full-length ballets Woolf Works and The Dante Project.  

Christopher Wheeldon has been The Royal Ballet’s Artistic Associate since 2012. Trained at The Royal Ballet School and danced with both the Company and Balanchine’s New York City Ballet, he has gained international acclaim for his choreographic breadth and versatility in a career that has spanned from both the ballet stage to Broadway. His best-loved works for The Royal Ballet include Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Winter’s Tale and Like Water for Chocolate. These works are narrative masterpieces of rich theatricality, and it is this quality that he has also carried over into his Broadway shows An American in Paris and MJ the Musical, which has earned him both Tony and Olivier awards.  

Crystal Pite is a Canadian choreographer who danced with William Forsythe’s Ballett Frankfurt. With her clever and fluid choreographic style, she plays with the shapes and architecture of big groups of dancers to create works that explore socially relevant issues. Her works for The Royal Ballet include Flight Pattern, which was later expanded to become Light of Passage, which grapples with themes of safe passage, displacement, community and mortality. The Royal Ballet has also recently performed her work The Statement, originally created for Nederlands Dans Theater, in which four characters navigate boardroom politics and battle for control.  

Pam Tanowitz is an American choreographer. Trained in the Cunningham tradition, she manipulates movement and space to create witty and unexpected works that invert the conventions of dance. For The Royal Ballet, she has created Everyone Keeps Me, Secret Things and Dispatch Duet, which was recently expanded to become Or Forevermore.  

Cathy Marston is a British choreographer. Trained at The Royal Ballet School, and former Associate Artist of the Royal Opera House, she is known for her storytelling works that offer unusual perspectives of well-known stories. For The Royal Ballet, she created In Our Wishes and The Cellist, based on the life and work of acclaimed cellist Jacquelin du Pré. 

Kyle Abraham is an American choreographer. His work is inspired by Black culture and history and focusses on telling Black and Queer stories. He created The Weathering for The Royal Ballet, a work which tackles themes of love, loss and acceptance.  

Valentino Zucchetti is an Italian choreographer, and also a First Soloist of The Royal Ballet. Adding a sophisticated contemporary twist to classical balletic form, Zucchetti has created Scherzo, its expanded counterpart Anemoi and Prima for The Royal Ballet.  

Contemporary works often have great collaborations behind them. Just like ballet impresarios in the 20th century such as Sergei Diaghilev, who commissioned a wide range of artists and composers from Sergei Prokofiev and Igor Stravinsky to Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, contemporary choreographers have drawn upon the creative energy and innovative spirit of today’s musicians, artists and designers.  

Original compositions for The Royal Ballet include work by Max Richter (Infra, Woolf Works), Joby Talbot (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Winter’s Tale, Like Water for Chocolate) and Thomas Adès (The Dante Project).  

Designers and artists that have worked with The Royal Ballet include Burberry (Untitled, 2023), Erdem (Corybantic Games), Roksanda (Prima, In Our Wishes), Jasper Conran (Within the Golden Hour), Narciso Rodriguez (Fool’s Paradise), Gareth Pugh (MADDADDAM, Carbon Life), John Pawson (Chroma), Edmund de Waal (Yugen), Tacita Dean (The Dante Project) and Julian Opie (Infra).