BalletBoyz mark a quarter of a century with a world premiere rather than a retrospective: Six Lethargies, set to Keaton Henson’s score for strings and played by a live orchestra, opens a four-night season at Sadler’s Wells on 18 November. Here is everything you need to know before you book.
Anniversaries in dance tend to invite a greatest-hits evening. BalletBoyz have chosen the harder option. For their 25th year the company has commissioned an entirely new full-length work, Six Lethargies, built on a piece of concert music and given only four performances at Sadler’s Wells, where the company is an Associate Artist. It is an exclusive London season, and a short one.
Who is dancing in Six Lethargies?
Eight dancers lead the piece: Joshua Attwood, Dan Baines, Alex De La Bastide, Paris Fitzpatrick, Dylan Jones, Elisabet Liisu Cerenius, Faye Tan and Kai Tomioka. Around them is a considerably larger ensemble, and the dancers share the stage with a 37-piece string orchestra playing live. The full line-up was announced in September, when we reported the casting.
What is Six Lethargies about?
The music came before the dance. Keaton Henson, the musician, composer, visual artist and poet who has worked with BalletBoyz for years, wrote Six Lethargies for string orchestra in 2019 as an exploration of how music acts on the body and the mind. The stage version turns its six movements into six emotional landscapes, and follows how trauma, memory, anxiety and empathy sit together in a person, and how they might find some kind of resolution.
There is no conventional plot to spoil. What the evening offers instead is a question Henson attached to the score and the company has taken as its brief: “If I write how it feels to me, will you feel it too?” The founders have said the subject, mental health and the part music and movement can play in recovery, is one close to their hearts.
Who is behind the production?
The company’s founders and artistic directors, Michael Nunn and William Trevitt, direct. The choreography is new, made by Iván Pérez and Seirian Griffiths, with costume design by Elisa Mozzanica and lighting design by Andrew Ellis. The score is Keaton Henson’s, played in full by the orchestra on stage.
It follows the company’s other anniversary piece, Still Pointless, and Nunn and Trevitt have framed the commission as a return to what has driven BalletBoyz since the start: original, ambitious new work. Henson, for his part, has called the score the thing he is proudest of, and said that BalletBoyz were the only company he wanted to reinterpret it with.
When and where can I see it?
Six Lethargies runs at Sadler’s Wells from Wednesday 18 to Saturday 21 November 2026, with press night on the opening evening, Wednesday 18 November. The piece runs for about 1 hour 10 minutes with no interval, and is recommended for ages 12 and over. Tickets currently start at £15, though prices will move as the four performances fill.
What else should I book if I like it?
- Visionaries: Robbins and MacMillan at the Royal Opera House overlaps with this season, and makes a natural counterweight: two twentieth-century masters of story and abstraction against a brand-new work. Our guide to that programme has the detail.
- Matthew Bourne’s Cinderella, the Blitz-era retelling, for another evening where dance carries the whole story without a word spoken.
- The Nutcracker from English National Ballet, if the live orchestra is what stays with you: Tchaikovsky’s score is the other great reason to sit near a pit this winter.
- The Snowman at the Peacock Theatre, Sadler’s Wells’ West End home, for something gentler to take younger dance fans to; here is our guide.
Four performances is not many for a company with this following. Book Six Lethargies at Sadler’s Wells for Wednesday 18 to Saturday 21 November 2026.
