World Ballet Day

World Ballet Day returns for its eighth year to invite you to get an insider’s view of over 50 dance companies around the globe. To find out more and get the full day schedule visit https://worldballetday.com/ In honour of World Ballet Day, Rambert School is proud to look back on our success and reminisce about Cameron McMillan’s piece ‘Un(i)form Sonatas’.

London based choreographer Cameron McMillan worked with us as one of our commissioned choreographers for 2021 to create a piece with our third year students. Cameron wanted to reflect the diversity of the Rambert School training in his approach. He described that: ‘It was intriguing to come to the School, as there’s an equal mix of ballet and contemporary dance and for me as a maker, this is very much along the lines of who I am as a dancer and as a choreographer.’

When discussing the piece Cameron said: ‘My piece is a more classical ballet focused work but in many ways one of the things I was interested about coming here to Rambert School was to really explore their versatility and training and really approach the work by really inhabiting the physical language they learn here and how they develop as artists. It’s been really fascinating to see these come together.’

Despite the focus on ‘classical ballet’ Cameron’s piece turned the gender norms on their head by introducing a uniform for all dancers. This included black tutus and later, black shorts regardless of gender. In his choreography of the pax de duex sections, Cameron again shook the heteronormativity of ballet and played with tradition. The duets were same sex couples, as well as swapping the conventional follower and leader roles, by having women lift men, which was refreshing and exciting for students to dance.

Rambert School is always aiming to push traditional boundaries and create cutting edge work. We have recently abolished our gender focused ballet uniform policy for practical clothing that the students feel comfortable in, regardless of personal gender presentation. We also encourage our students to dance repertoire that they enjoy, rather than repertoire that is supposedly made for their gender and include gender neutral choreography options for our students to select for our annual end of year solo performances.

At Rambert School we believe excellence comes in all forms, and continue to celebrate just that.