Home From Home: The Swan Tickets

About Home From Home: The Swan

At 3pm on Wednesday 8 April, BBC’s Culture in Quarantine will make available a specially curated performance of The Swan, introduced by Carlos Acosta and performed by Birmingham Royal Ballet principal dancer Céline Gittens, accompanied by principal pianist Jonathan Higgins and cellist Antonio Novais from Birmingham Royal Ballet’s orchestra, the Royal Ballet Sinfonia. This poignant piece, set to Camille Saint-Saëns' Le Cygne from Le Carnaval des animaux, was originally choreographed by Mikhail Fokine for legendary ballerina Anna Pavlova and is popularly known as The Dying Swan. Director of Birmingham Royal Ballet, Carlos Acosta says "Welcome everybody in this moment of stillness. We are going to try an experiment; I frankly don’t know how it’s going to turn out. We are going to perform for you one of my favourite pieces, The Swan. I have purposely changed the end, so this is a dance about life, about hope. This is a dance of promises, it represents the end of something and the beginning of something else, and in these crazy times that we are living we all need a new beginning. This is a gift from Birmingham Royal Ballet to you, enjoy."