Most recent performance
There are currently no scheduled performances of The Age of Anxiety. It was last on stage 15 March—9 April 2018 as part of the Winter 2017/18 season.
Introduction
In a New York bar in wartime four lonely strangers attempt to find spiritual meaning in an industrialized world.
Background
The Royal Ballet’s Artist in Residence Liam Scarlett created The Age of Anxiety on the Company in 2014. After his dark, probing narrative works Sweet Violets and Hansel and Gretel he turned to Leonard Bernstein’s Second Symphony and the epic poem by W.H. Auden that inspired it. As the Evening Standard wrote at the ballet’s premiere, ‘Scarlett’s bitter-sweet take on American modernism… brilliantly conveys the sadness beneath the skin’.
Bernstein had an intense emotional response to Auden’s poem, which explores the atmosphere of disillusionment and uncertainty that followed World War II; he later wrote that ‘When I first read the book I was breathless’. In the symphony this deep personal resonance is married with Bernstein’s instinctive sense of rhythm, which has made his music so ideal for dance. John Macfarlane, who has collaborated with Scarlett on all his main-stage works for The Royal Ballet, provides designs ‘superb in detail and atmosphere’ (The Guardian).
News and features
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Catch The Royal Ballet's Bernstein Centenary live in cinemas on 27 March 2018
23 March 2018
Two new ballets and The Age of Anxiety will be broadcast live across the world as part of the Royal Opera House Cinema Season.
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Cast changes: The Age of Anxiety Spring 2018
6 February 2018
Cast changes and confirmations have been announced.
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Watch: Rehearsals for The Royal Ballet's Symphonic Dances
24 April 2017
Choreographer Liam Scarlett gives a glimpse of his new ballet set to Rachmaninoff's remarkable score.
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Going Underground: A day in the life of the orchestra pit
22 January 2015
How do beautiful performances emerge from such dark, cramped conditions?
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The Royal Ballet to tour the USA in June 2015
15 January 2015
The Company will perform in Washington D.C., Chicago and New York over the course of three weeks.
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Stories without words: Narrative ballets and their many inspirations
20 November 2014
How and where choreographers find stories has changed throughout the art form's history.
