Northern Dance Theatre, later Northern Ballet Theatre and Northern Ballet

Northern Ballet was founded in 1969 at the University Theatre in Manchester, with support from the Arts Council and North West Arts. It was originally known as Northern Dance Theatre and began life with just 11 dancers. The founding director was Laverne Meyer.

Meyer, who had been born in Canada, studied at the Rambert School and the Royal Ballet School, joining Western Theatre Ballet in 1957, where he danced principal roles before eventually becoming assistant director of the company. Meyer then spent time studying modern dance in New York in 1964. Under Meyer’s founding directorship, Northern’s repertoire centred on smaller scale classical and modern pieces.

In 1976 the company changed its name to Northern Ballet Theatre in 1976 when Robert de Warren was appointed as company director. Under de Warren, a former Royal Ballet dancer who had also worked with a number of German companies, the company began to focus on the classical repertoire. He recruited dancers from many countries, and, as well as staging works of his own, he included works by choreographers as diverse as August Bournonville, Mikhail Fokine, Walter Gore and John Cranko. The company increased in size, numbering 28 dancers, and Rudolf Nureyev, the company’s artistic laureate, performed frequently as a guest. Princess Margaret became Northern Ballet Theatre’s Royal Patron.

In 1987 former Royal Ballet principal Christopher Gable took the company’s helm, creating productions that stressed the dramatic aspect of ballet. His association with the company had begun that same year, when after 20 years away from the ballet stage, he took the role of the artist LS Lowry in Gillian Lynne’s A Simple Man, which she originally created for television before turning it into a stage work. (In 1982, before working with Northern Ballet Theatre, Gable had co-founded Central School of Ballet.) Under Gable the company mounted many full-length classics, as well as new works on such subjects as A Christmas Carol, Dracula and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The company gained an enviable reputation for its work in presenting highly popular narrative and dramatic ballets to a wide audience, and its productions were also presented abroad. During his time at Northern, he remained its artistic director, and Central School of Ballet became a source of dancers for the company.

When Gable died in 1999, Stefano Gianetti, a former principal at English National Ballet and Deutsche Oper, stepped in until May 2000, when he left to work internationally as a choreographer. His production of Great Expectations was well received when it was premiered in Leeds, the company’s new home city in February 2000.

Northern Ballet Theatre’s fifth and longest-serving director was the Canadian David Nixon, who took up the position in August 2001. As a choreographer, Nixon further consolidated the company’s standing and reputation for creating inventive full-length ballets on subjects as wide-ranging as Wuthering Heights, Cleopatra, Beauty and the Beast, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Great Gatsby, Dangerous Liaisons, Ondine, Dracula, Swan Lake, The Nutcracker and The Little Mermaid. His version of Madame Butterfly was his first production for Northern in February 2002, and was followed by his Gershwin-inspired I Got Rhythm in May of that year. A number of the ballets featured music composed by Claude-Michel Schonberg.

Under Nixon’s leadership, the company took on its current title of Northern Ballet, while it also acquired a purpose-built space in Leeds, alongside Phoenix Dance Theatre. The building includes seven dance studios, a small theatre, and facilities for educational work and administration. He also commissioned works from talented young choreographers, including Jane Eyre and Victoria from Cathy Marston, Casanova from Kenneth Tindall, 1984 from Jonathan Watkins and Merlin from Drew McOnie. With Northern Ballet firmly established, nationally and internationally, Nixon stepped down in 2022. He was succeeded by Federico Bonelli, a former Royal Ballet principal, who has already followed the company’s well-established practice of commissioning new works, as well as reviving earlier Northern successes.