The Royal Ballet School’s annual Summer Performances are the culmination of the year’s training for our dancers featuring a range of works that represent the breadth and diversity of our art form Students will perform works that showcase their skills and artistry contemporary work and traditional character dancers As the White Lodge studios were brimming with character skirts and lively Romanian folk music we were thrilled to interview guest choreographer Born into the world of character and folk dance Tom Bosma travelled around the world from a young age to learn traditional character dance Tom joined the Yugoslav Dance Theatre ‘ORO’ and later worked as ballet master and coach at the International Dance Theatre in Amsterdam My father was a character dancer and teacher so I grew up in a family where folk dancing and character dance was the normal thing to do Tom also worked as a character dance teacher and choreographer at the Royal Conservatoire in the Hague from 1973 and became the Deputy-Director of the dance department Tom also worked as a guest teacher and choreographer for numerous ballet schools across the globe including the National Ballet Academy in Amsterdam Chabukiani Tbilisi Ballet School and Escuela Nacional de Ballet Fernando Alonso Character and folk dance are an integral part of classical ballet repertoire providing young dancers with exposure to different cultures and movement styles Widely studied in many schools and institutions across the world character dance helps dancers develop their expression all while learning to adapt to different rhythms and syncopations Don Quixote and Swan Lake are quintessential examples of the power of character dance as a method of storytelling Our students receive exposure to a range of styles as part of the curriculum Opportunities like this help our students to become versatile young dancers with strong musicality and technique We spoke to Tom about his passion for character and folk dancing: It is fantastic because children learn rhythms and different ways of listening to music It is a different way of moving and all countries have their own style which is extremely important for them to learn A visit to a Romanian museum inspired the piece Hora La Aninoasa Tom was drawn to an artwork of Romanian people dancing in a circle in the village of Aninoasa I made this piece based on a painting by Mr where you see an old Romanian house with various people dancing in different costumes My choreography is made from different parts of Romania The younger dancers perform choreography from the west of Romania the middle dancers perform choreography from the middle and the older dancers perform choreography from the south All year groups dance their own choreography from a distinct area featuring distinctive folkloristic music and traditional Romanian costumes that highlight the unique style of dancing you would encounter in each region Tom’s extensive travels have shaped his choreographic style as he utilises authentic material from his experiences in each country Tom pieces together the traditional steps and movements he learned from his time in Romania and spatially arranges the dancers in interesting formations Tom learned about folklore by attending company rehearsals and festivals in different parts of the country he learned a special dance for men from a pair of young boys Tom hopes to convey the richness of Romanian folklore and you can expect a ‘very alive and musical’ piece We thank him for enriching our student’s worldly knowledge and look forward to seeing Hora La Aninoasa on stage Hora La Aninoasa is brought to you with generous support from The Royal Ballet School Stage Supporters 2023 The Royal Ballet School’s Summer Performances are sponsored by Kinoshita Group Find out more about our Summer Performances and book tickets [email protected] © 2025 The Royal Ballet School | Registered charity no: 214364 A cracked mural of industrial workers adorns the hall of a derelict coal mine in the Romanian town of Aninoasa a place which is likewise faded and crumbling The mine was formerly the town’s main employer accelerating what was already a period of economic decline Aninoasa has become the first town in Romania to file for insolvency lies in the mountainous central Jiu Valley a region which was once home to a powerful coal industry that has fallen on bad times Town officials took out a bank loan to fund investment projects and they fell behind on paying other bills Over the years they got themselves so deep in debt they could not carry on Retired miners Victor Pop and his brother Florea pose for a picture at their home With few opportunities remaining in Aninoasa lots of young people have left and many remaining residents are retirees whose monthly pensions help keep the town going A cab crosses a railroad track in Aninoasa A broken traffic sign welcomes visitors to the town A woman walks down one of Aninoasa’s streets with two young children Boys play a ball game in front of a derelict coal mine 58-year-old pensioner Victor Pop sits on a railing as another man helps to insulate his apartment Men paint the entrance of an apartment block A woman paints the window of her apartment A poster offering jobs for video-chatline workers is stuck to the door of a closed shop A stone is wedged in the window of a derelict coal mine A disused mining building stands in the town of Lupeni A peeling relief is seen in Aninoasa's derelict coalmine A sign marks the entrance of the closed mine Getting to Jiu Valley – once home to a powerful coal mining industry that has since fallen on bad times – is difficult The main road there is currently closed to traffic three days a week because of repair works so I arrived in the small Jiu Valley town of Aninoasa after driving for 7 hours on detour roads It is roughly 330 kms (205 miles) to Aninoasa from the Romanian capital Bucharest Aninoasa is the oldest town in Hunedoara County But earlier this year it also became the first town in Romania to have filed for insolvency with simple houses and ramshackle communist-era apartment buildings to house coal miners Today there are only a few coal mines still left in Jiu Valley no replacement jobs have been created since the mine closed although some walls still show notices and labor warnings from their glory days: “Please Keep Clean!” Many of those remaining in Aninoasa are retired and their monthly pensions are practically the only funds keeping the town alive names and amounts owed at small grocery stores People were initially very reluctant to talk to me I stuck around and insisted and by the next day passers-by all knew me and we greeted each other with smiles their reluctance faded and I started making friends who invited me to see how they live When I ask them how they feel about the town filing for insolvency They are just happy to have public lighting back on I still have a lot of ground to cover here in Aninoasa I look up and finally understand the locals’ satisfaction about public lighting: it works By visiting our site, you agree to our privacy policy regarding cookies The Royal Ballet school rounded off their 2023 season with the annual summer performance at the Royal Opera House in a programme of ten pieces with the usual Grand Défilé finale featuring the whole school the modern pieces showcased the dancers’ skill technique and emotional engagement somewhat better than the classical ones who performed the opening solo of Mikaela Polley’s all-male work Dancing in total silence for several minutes he commanded the stage with searing emotion and a fluidity of movement which made him appear both vulnerable and immensely strong Another exceptional talent is Caspar Lench a dramatic solo piece to a vocal accompaniment we will hear more of these two young dancers in the years ahead the female leads showcased were all strong including Taeryeong Kim as Kitri and Milda Luckute as The Queen of the Dryads in the ‘Dream Scene’ from Carlos Acosta’s London production of Don Quixote; and Liya Fan as The Young Girl in the pas de deux from Frederick Ashton’s The Two Pigeons needing that finesse that a year or two of professional experience will give The younger dancers from White Lodge gave accomplished and charming performances a Romanian folk dance where the work with the ‘sticks’ deserves a medal for performers and teachers alike Jiri Kylian’s Sechs Tänze and Goyo Montero’s Bold were outstanding and performed at a professional level while Bournonville’s Konservatoriet was perhaps not a wise choice Despite the wonderful opening tableau that reproduces a Degas painting and requires experienced dancers to produce the effect of a class the traditional Grand Défilé ‘walk-down,’ was perfect in both its choreography and timing even one as prestigious as the Royal Ballet School children and young people in various stages of training is one commenting on their progression so far for presenting a very high standard end-of-year performance What amazingly talented children and young dancers I could not have enjoyed it more.” And that surely says it all My mother worked in the field of photography so I grew up around cameras and a darkroom My earliest memories of photos are the beautiful black and white pictures Taking pictures myself came quite naturally… I don’t remember my first assignment very well but I can say that each new photography job is like the first one It gives me the same feeling of excitement Experience shapes what I’m doing quite heavily but there is always space to think about new things It’s very hard to choose a single event that left the biggest mark on me you love them all just the same (although maybe the youngest a little bit more!) One job that did make a big impact on me took place in 2006 when the River Danube flooded southern Romania I spent an Easter service in a field with lots of the hopeless refugees It was hard to see them with tears in their eyes but at the same time with real faith in God’s help It’s a real challenge to try to show things with pictures that people usually just hear or read about it’s exciting to know that your pictures could be seen all around the world and I always try to be a credible witness for everybody I would like to thank my friend and colleague Radu Sigheti for what I am now This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page In the delightful setting of Opera Holland Park Royal Ballet School summer show kicked off with the vision scene from Carlos Acosta’s Don Quixote While it certainly serves the purpose of presenting a large cast George Edwards as the eponymous anti-hero partnered nicely Sasha Manuel was a fey Kitri but rather danced with all the stops in Milda Luckute as Queen of the Dryads had most life She did however appear to struggle a little with the tempo Fast Blue would have been a much better opening not last because the pre-professional men all looked far more confident Precision and placing were consistently good everyone having sufficient presence to show off the wit and nuance in this super work by Mikaela Polley and the young men looked far more impressive than the women throughout the show Fast Blue would not have looked amiss on the professional stage with Francesca Lloyd which came with a good sense of structure It is good to see that choreography is being encouraged at the beginning of dancers’ careers although it could perhaps have showcased technique more Sucitoarele showed the senior years of the Lower School in a folk dance that will prepare the students for character dances in the major ballet works It is a sort of Romanian Morris dance with the students brandishing clave-like sticks and demonstrating some neat work as they clashed with each other and the floor There was plenty of room for error (it might have been fun to watch the early rehearsals) but no one put a foot Bold by Goyo Montero is an ensemble work that demonstrates the flexibility of technique required of classical dancers as ballet effectively engulfs contemporary dance There was much rushing on and off as black costumed bodies undulated in the semi-darkness The second half opened with a rare viewing of Kenneth MacMillan’s The Four Seasons The women seemed better suited to this than the purely classical Don Quixote and they seemed to enjoy it more too They certainly demonstrated that they could bourrée endlessly The undoubted highlight of the performance was Robert Battle’s terrific solo with by far the biggest presence of the evening Technically tricky and demanding a fair bit of discipline and stamina He embodied every ounce of the rapid mood changes and one just wanted to rewind and see it again Paradoja presented ten students from the upper year of White Lodge in choreography by Year 10 student Cesar Ortego Garçia another work that concentrated on the modern rather than classical The still-learning young choreographer certainly showed he already knows how to manage a group There was more student choreography in How It Ends an ensemble piece created to pop music by Rebecca Stewart A welcome return to classicism came with the pas de deux from The Two Pigeons Edwards got a chance to shine after his cameo appearance at the opening dancing this sentimental Frederick Ashton classic with Bethany Bartlett They pulled it off with a maturity of understanding presumably objecting to the sudden summer downpour (it is Wimbledon fortnight after all) Unfortunately it had departed by the time it could have nabbed a solo excerpts from Christopher Wheeldon’s Within The Golden Hour was well done and got the pre-professional year onstage together it was lacking the excitement and the pizzazz that perhaps one of the classic pas de deux staples might have provided While the boundaries between classical and contemporary are getting ever more blurred It would have been good to see the dancers given the opportunity to demonstrate their technique and understanding of the 19th-century canon More that demonstrated ability to create character would have been nice too although I suppose you can’t have everything Five decades after the peak of coal mining in the towns in the Jiu Valley of Romania’s Hunedoara County that economic activity is reaching its final years 14 mines and several factories are located in the coal basin Petrila and Petroșani in the eastern part of the valley and Aninoasa We visited some of the affected towns as well as a former mine and educational institutions to understand what the future holds after coal there A turning point for the country's industry was the so-called "Mineriada" - a term used for each of the six consecutive violent political interventions by the Valley’s miners in Bucharest The most severe of these occurred in 1990 and became a key event in Romanian history students and teachers against the new government established after the December 1989 revolution that overthrew communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu were brutally suppressed The protesters demanded the replacement of Communist-era officials and the appointment of people who had no part in the party Then-President Ion Iliescu called on the miners from the Jiu Valley against the protesters in University Square The resulting brutal repression left four people dead and over 1,300 people illegally imprisoned Images of the miners arriving in Bucharest by train quickly replaced the idealized working-class image of the miners of communism Jiu experienced a huge economic shock that led to the restructuring of the industrial sector in the valley and the closure of most of the mines almost 20,000 miners lost their jobs out of a total of 45,000 employed the authorities offered miners compensation of between 12 and 20 times their salaries fewer than 2,000 people work in the four remaining coal mines in the Jiu Valley which are currently undergoing reclamation while Vulcan and Livezeni are due to close by 2032 according to the program established by the Romanian government the region has experienced periods of unprecedented growth and profound socio-economic crises And while some locals still live with nostalgia for the golden age of mining executive director of the Association for Integrated Territorial Development of the Jiu Valley more than 70,000 people made their living thanks to the sector - because it is not just the miners there are also other industries related to mining it wasn't just the miners who were affected It's an understatement to say that about the social and cultural life of the community itself because we were miners by definition and in fact our whole life – including sports and culture - was directly related to mining." told us how important the mining sector was in Romania A large number of the mining industry workers have retired Many of them have retrained in other fields such as construction or something related to their previous profession Ridzi gave the example of retraining in fields such as wind turbine installation energy products and other activities in the sector keep in mind that many of them started small businesses These European start-up programs helped them a lot and many of them who worked in the mine started their own small businesses," he added There is still no major investor in the area to absorb the large number of people who have left mining There's nothing like Bosch or Volkswagen in the Jiu Valley yet We're putting the puzzle together in small pieces."  the six affected municipalities in the valley are uniting to work together for a just transition unions and NGOs must speak the same language and work in the same direction.   It wasn't easy to get everyone to the table It's a very difficult process because six municipalities have six different opinions I was one of those who fought very hard to be present and be part of the solution."  the government approved the Strategy for the Development of the Jiu Valley until 2030 Coordinated by the Association for Integrated Territorial Development it aims to improve the standard of living and create a healthy and sustainable environment with the help of funds from the European Union.  The mayor imagines a future of Petrosani that has new industries and services as well as the development of year-round tourism which he believes can and should be a very important component in the local economy we need to emphasize the university environment as much as possible which is a plus and a competitive advantage for us as a region." Electrical engineers Benone Croitor and Madalin Brandau work at the Livezeni mine Both have completed the RenewAcad vocational training academy They told Economic.bg that they would prefer to focus on the green energy sector but there are currently no opportunities in their region and it's another thing to be high above the ground." They say that coal workers want change and accept it the opportunity to work in the green industry is far from their region and their families They are sure that if new jobs from the sector appeared locally The legacy of the coal industry in the cities of the Jiu Valley is full of challenges for the young people there but they have decided to find solutions now to have a better future Education is one of the "lifeboats" in the region - in Petroşani there is a university It trains specialists in all areas of activity specific to the mining industry it has expanded its offer to include things like business and robotics programs The city also houses the "Mihai Eminescu" Profiled High School with Intensive Romanian Language Studies - one of the elite high schools in the country young people have access to a robotics laboratory where they create their own robots which they then test out in competitions against other teams the Association for Integrated Territorial Development supports and develops the Robotics Valley project It was launched in 2019 and is currently running It aims to be an innovative social enterprise bringing together five robotics teams from the six affected coal regions in Jiu.  and it brings together several students and their mentors who meet daily to work on developing their own robot which is learning how to pick plastic pieces of a specific colour and place them in an indicated place The team has already won a bunch of awards and it gets constantly renovated as new members come in and older ones graduate.  Kelemen believes that this is one of the directions for the future of the Jiu Valley and the "Robotics Valley" project is strategic and "we will do as much as possible for it."  what we want to do is create a new future for the children of the Jiu Valley And they have already done this without European funds so it is actually our responsibility to support them are emerging as rising stars on the path of the Just Transition in the region."  He defines "Robotics Valley" as an honest project that comes from the heart.  The plans for the development of the project include the creation of a dedicated robotics education center, which will be housed in the former Petrila mine The goal is to bring together teams from the valley which can collaborate and organize workshops on hardware The initiative is based on the experience of organizing 4 events dedicated to robotics in the Petrila mine premises the locals aim to transform the Jiu Valley into an ecosystem of opportunities for the young generations.  It all started as a beautiful dream and turned into a way of life we have acquired various skills that help us in our daily lives and will also help us in our future careers which is why we always try to develop other people's mindset as much as possible and lead our community towards change," say the AlphaBit team members.  we felt that the traditional mining greeting: “Good luck!” was highly befitting to the situation as the region faces many challenges The locals believe that it is indeed the opportunities that will help create a new identity after coal by opening the door to new types of industries and prosperities Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Managing Authority Neither the European Union nor the Managing Authority can be held responsible for them