Birmingham Royal Ballet’s latest production, Luna, is a captivating sensory experience, combining the vibrant energy of a children’s choir, the drama of opera, world-class ballet, and original music to create a breathtaking journey of movement and sound.
Since joining Birmingham Royal Ballet, Artistic Director Carlos Acosta has commissioned three ballets rooted in Birmingham’s heritage. The first, City of a Thousand Trades, explored the city’s development since the Industrial Revolution and the experiences of migrants settling in a new place. Black Sabbath fused ballet with heavy metal, and saw Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi perform with the dancers at some of the shows. Iommi also attended the opening of Luna.
Luna is inspired by Louise Palfreyman’s book Once Upon a Time in Birmingham: Women Who Dared to Dream Big, which celebrates the city’s pioneering women. This female-led production includes five international choreographers, each creating unique scenes around the themes of empowerment, dreaming big, and overcoming adversity.
The show begins with 30 Birmingham children, recruited and trained by BRB to sing and dance especially for this production. They take on the role of the sea, lamenting the plastic and oil now found in their tongues and hair, while dancers move on stage, representing the ebb and flow of the waves.
For book lovers in the audience, Seeta Patel has choreographed a joyful scene where dancers move with illuminated books to symbolise the importance of education and knowledge for female empowerment. As children sneak out of bed to read under the moonlight, their future careers—as composers, doctors, and more—are revealed.
The standout performer was principal dancer Beatrice Parma, who led two of the key scenes. She first appears in Unwavering, my favourite scene of the show. Her partnership with Javier Rojas was superb, with Rojas portraying a father offering distant support to his daughter. Their lifts gave the impression of Parma flying across the cloud-filled backdrop, enhancing the dreamlike atmosphere. The dancers were accompanied by two opera singers on stage, which added further depth to the performance. Parma and Rojas’ chemistry was breathtaking, and Luna is worth seeing for this scene alone.
The performance ends with the children’s choir returning as the journey reaches the moon. The set transitions from the darkness of the night sky to the golden colours of a new dawn. In the final sequence, all the dancers from the individual scenes come together for one last dance, showing the unity that ties the entire production together.
Although Luna takes us from the depths of the sea to the moon, it is very much a reflection of Birmingham itself—a city where people from all corners of the world unite to create something new and dazzling.
