Next month sees Birmingham Royal Ballet revisit another of its highly acclaimed works: Carlos Acosta’s Don Quixote. A tale of love and loyalty, the story is one of Carlos’ favourites - as he recently explained to What’s On...

Dancer Carlos Acosta was just 16 when he won the gold medal at the prestigious Prix de Lausanne, performing a solo from Marius Petipa’s ballet Don Quixote. The prize win launched an international career which saw him dancing with leading ballet companies worldwide - and Don Quixote has remained one of his favourite works ever since.

So, when he took over as director of Birmingham Royal Ballet (BRB) in 2020, Carlos was keen to create a Don Quixote for Birmingham. Premiered in 2022, the work was hugely acclaimed - and this spring Midlands audiences have another chance to see the production.

For Carlos, adding Don Quixote - a comic opera based on Miguel Cervantes’ novel about the knight Don Quixote and his sidekick Sancho Panza - to the BRB repertory was essential.

“Dance is a living art form, and we always have to rejuvenate the repertory,” he explains. “We are lucky in Birmingham that we have fantastic productions, but for me as a director, I wanted to add to what has already been established.

“BRB had never had a production of Don Quixote. It is the ballet that I danced the most when I was a dancer, so I have a grasp of what it is and what it takes, and I could transfer all this expertise to this company.”

With a host of different characters, from knights to lovers and innkeepers to gypsies, the ballet offers dancers plenty of opportunities to shine.

“It’s a very important production because it has a lot of parts for dancers in the company, not just the principal rank. And it is also very difficult dancing, so the company really like it because it is a great challenge for them.

“I want BRB to be a company of virtuosos, and that means bringing difficult and diverse repertory that improves the standards of the dancers.”

Carlos’ determination to create new work for the repertory has seen the company dance a host of premieres, including the sell-out Black Sabbath - The Ballet. But, he says, there is a need for balance in the programming.

“Even when we go increasingly into contemporary repertory which is forward-thinking and pushing the boundaries, we mustn’t forget what ballet is, and who we are as a ballet company. And who we are in many ways is these classical productions. We train every single day with ballet vocabulary, and Don Quixote has every step in the vocabulary that you could think of.”

Carlos was also keen for his Don Quixote to stand out from the crowd.

“I made the production so that people speak and shout, and there are special effects of sound and projection, and there is acoustic guitar playing. I’m very proud of what we accomplished.

“It’s one of those productions which is a feel-good production, and at the end, the audience is joyful. It has so many elements to it. You name it and it’s in there: comedy, romance, sunshine.”

For the new tour, the company has updated some of the show’s sets and costumes - a campaign supported by this year’s Big Give Appeal.

“Touring is a very expensive activity, but we are a touring company and this is what we do, this is why we exist - to tour big-scale ballets. But undoubtedly when you take a ballet production on tour, there is something that needs repairing or replacing, and that costs.

“We also wanted to work on some of the costumes, to make them look better, and we are very grateful to everyone who has supported us in this. People are so generous; they know the circumstances we are facing, and there are a lot of people who are willing to help because ballet and this company gives them a lot of pleasure.”

Touring is not only the lifeblood of the company - it also ensures BRB is an ambassador for Birmingham both across the UK and internationally.

“It’s very good for the morale of the city and the community that supports BRB - and that is Birmingham. We have the title of the city as a headline of the institution; it is the Birmingham Royal Ballet, so I think when we tour, it’s a way of bringing awareness of how important this city has been in the world.

“If you don’t make an effort to bang the drum and keep this history alive, people will forget. People forget they made classic cars in Coventry; that Birmingham was the shop place of the world, the city of a thousand trades; that Birmingham has more canals than Venice and all that.

“One of the things I wanted to do to herald the importance of the city and its community was to bring ballets that no other companies have. Hence, Black Sabbath, which represents directly the culture of Birmingham to the world, and Don Quixote, which I made directly for Birmingham.

“No one else in the world has these productions, and that gives the audience an opportunity to come and see something they can’t see anywhere else.”

Carlos’ support for the city was marked last June when he was awarded an honorary degree by University of Birmingham. And his role in the world of the arts was celebrated in October when he won the UK Theatre Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Theatre.

“The Theatre Award was amazing and unexpected. It was for the productions I’ve put on, all the things I am programming. It was fantastic, not just for me but also for the ballet sector to be recognised in the world of theatre.”

Last year also saw BRB principal Beatrice Palma win the Outstanding Female Classic Performance at the National Dance Awards, for her role as Lise in La Fille mal gardée. She also won the prestigious Dance Europe’s Dancer of the Year award.

Carlos says this recognition is heartily deserved: “Beatrice is a very versatile ballerina. In Fille she is pure Ashton, with great technical ability. And then, in Luna - that is very hard contemporary language. So to have a ballerina who mastered those two spectrums of dance is incredible, and people took notice of that. It’s great to see how some people just rise to the challenge, and she is a ballerina who doesn’t rest. She wants more; she is 100 per cent committed - and if you have that attitude, you see the results.”

Birmingham Royal Ballet present Carlos Acosta’s Don Quixote at Birmingham Hippodrome from Thursday 12 to Saturday 21 February

By Diane Parkes