Matthew Ball

English dancer Matthew Ball is a Principal dancer of The Royal Ballet. He trained at The Royal Ballet School and joined the Company during the 2013/14 Season, promoted to First Artist in 2015, Soloist in 2016, First Soloist in 2017 and Principal dancer in 2018.

Ball was born in Liverpool. He joined The Royal Ballet School aged 11 and graduated through the School. Roles while a student included Fritz (The Nutcracker) with The Royal Ballet. Awards as a student include at the School’s 2011 Lynn Seymour Competition, the 2009 Kenneth MacMillan Senior Choreographic Competition and the Gailene Stock and Gary Norman Award for Excellence. He was twice a finalist at the Young British Dancer of the Year Award.

Ball’s roles with the Company include Prince Siegfried, Romeo, Apollo, Armand, Prince Florimund and Bluebird (The Sleeping Beauty), Prince (The Nutcracker), Crown Prince Rudolf (Mayerling), Des Grieux (Manon), Solor (La bayadère), Lensky (Onegin), Lysander (The Dream), Young Man (The Two Pigeons), Troyte (Enigma Variations) Escamillo (Acosta’s Carmen), Officer (Anastasia), Rasputin (Anastasia Act III) Albrecht and pas de six (Giselle), Matvei and Beliaev (Month in the Country), Lensky (Onegin), Wirt Roddy (The Wind), Basilio (Don Quixote), Franz (Coppélia), The Prince (Cinderella) and in Yugen, Symphonic Dances, Jewels, The Human Seasons, Woolf Works, Afternoon of a Faun, Carbon Life, Scènes de ballet, Aeternum, Age of Anxiety, The Statement, DGV: Danse à grande vitesse and For Four. His role creations include Dr John Brown (Like Water for Chocolate), Albert de Belleroche (Strapless), The Conductor (The Cellist) and in Corybantic Games, The Illustrated ‘Farewell’, Multiverse, Obsidian Tear, Strapless, Connectome, Untouchable, The Unknown Soldier, Medusa,The Dante Project and Light of Passage. In 2016 he was named Best Emerging Artist at the Critics’ Circle National Dance Awards. He performed The Swan/Stranger in Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake.