Don Quixote (Royal Opera House)

Carlos Acosta's first venture directing one of ballet's 19th century classics was eagerly anticipated, as was his own starring role in the production (as Basilio), opposite the Argentinian Royal Ballet principal Marianella Nuñez (Kitri). Still built on Petipa's original choreography, Acosta's clear dramatic structure and vivid stage action gave the ‘boy gets girl despite her father’ story a more convincing air than usual, with Don Quixote's parallel obsession with Dulcinea-Kitri coherently woven into the plot.

Breathtaking sets and costumes are designed by Ezio Frigerio and Franca Squarciapino in this exceptional production, recorded at the Palais Garnier in Paris. Direction and choreography in this fully restored version of Marius Petipa's original ballet are by Rudolf Nureyev. Live performance recorded in 1994.

Marius Petipa’s exotic ballet set in legendary India is a story of love, death and vengeful judgement. Natalia Makarova’s sumptuous recreation of Petipa’s choreography, with atmospheric sets by Pier Luigi Samaritini and beautiful costumes by Yolanda Sonnabend, stars Tamara Rojo as the Bayadère (temple dancer) Nikiya, Carlos Acosta as Solor, and Marianela Nuñez as Gamzatti, whose alluring presence challenges Solor’s love for Nikiya. Live performance recorded in 2009.

Slovanské tance

Filmed on the stage of London's Covent Garden. Includes extracts from Swan lake, Ondine & The Firebird.

When rebellious street dancer Andie lands at the elite Maryland School of the Arts, she finds herself fighting to fit in while also trying to hold onto her old life. When she joins forces with the schools hottest dancer, Chase, to form a crew of classmate outcasts to compete in Baltimore s underground dance battle The Streets.

Live from ROH 2009, TV relay 1/12/2009.

The Bolshoi Ballet performs the Russian fairy tale of a Queen Maiden (Maya Plisetskaya), a stableboy (Vladimir Vasiliev) and a lucky horse (Alla Shcherbinina).

After the death of her mother, Sara moves to the South Side of Chicago to live with her father and gets transferred to a majority-black school. Her life takes a turn for the better when befriends Chenille and her brother Derek, who helps her with her dancing skills.

A filmed performance of Stravinsky's ballet Les Noces (The Wedding), depicting a bleakly cynical interpretation of the marriage ritual.

When a hip hop violinist busking in the New York subway encounters a classical dancer on scholarship at the Manhattan Conservatory of the Arts, sparks fly. With the help of a hip hop dance crew they must find a common ground while preparing for a competition that could change their lives forever.

Antony Tudor's 1942 ballet "Pillar of Fire" in a 1973 performance with American Ballet Theater.

A group of 12 teenagers from various backgrounds enroll at the American Ballet Academy in New York to make it as ballet dancers and each one deals with the problems and stress of training and getting ahead in the world of dance.

For the first time! Come behind the scenes and splendors of this fabulous world-famed company! Come inside its rehearsal halls, its opening nights, its dreams!

In his 45th year as artistic director of Hamburg Ballet, John Numeier directs a modern adaptation of Tolstoy's masterpiece "Anna Karenina" in co-production with the Bolshoi Theatre and the National Ballet of Canada.

The Gay Parisian is an American short film produced in 1941 by Warner Bros. featuring the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo and directed by Jean Negulesco. The film is a screen adaptation, in Technicolor, of the 1938 ballet Gaîté Parisienne, choreographed by Léonide Massine to music by Jacques Offenbach. It was nominated for an Academy Award at the 14th Academy Awards for Best Short Subject (Two-Reel).

Les Sylphides is a short, non-narrative ballet blanc to piano music by Frédéric Chopin, selected and orchestrated by Alexander Glazunov.

A well-composed psychological dance drama of a completely different kind from the usual romantic and sometimes superficial ballets. And an intrusive interpretation of August Strindberg's play.

"Music is a dream from which the veils have been lifted. It's not even the expression of a feeling, it's the feeling itself." This quote from Claude Debussy describes the musical world of this programme, made up of his own works and works by Maurice Ravel. In the choreography of Ravel's and Debussy's music by Jeroen Verbruggen and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, fluid lines, dream and atmosphere are strongly present.

The Bolshoi’s grandiose epic Spartacus recounts the story of a Roman slave’s fight for freedom. With its famous Khachaturian score, since the 1960s it has been considered one of the greatest ballets in the Bolshoi repertoire. The choreography by Yuri Grigorovich fills the Bolshoi stage with dynamic scenes of tension and conflict, and gives full expression to the virility and strength for which Russia’s male dancers are renowned.