Spring Term 2026: Monday 5th January-Saturday 28th March 

Half term:  16th – 21st February 2026, last day of spring term: Saturday 28th March

Summer Term begins: Monday 13th April 2026

 

SUMMER TERM PERFORMANCES. Highgate Ballet School Presents

Essential Grace!

We are celebrating the 30th Anniversary of Highgate Ballet School with three performances over the weekend of 4th and 5th July 2026 at the Arundel centre, Channing School, Highgate, N6. Students in Standard 1 and above will take part. More details to follow soon!

 

Congratulations

To Alexi Mutasa, Marlie Bethel and Sophie Ollier who have been accepted onto the touring programme of London Children’s Ballet and another well done to Sophie who has had her place on English National Ballet School’s Associate Programme confirmed for the next school year 2026-27.

 

Cecchetti goes viral! YouTubers Jordan and Eden of Ballet Reign take classes at Highgate Ballet School in October 2025

…and they survived Advanced 2 Cecchetti to make a video of their experience! 

Watch the Vlog here: https://youtu.be/XdjxnlT_WuU?si=wXUVb3RrzP9GjjOO

Cecchetti met Bournonville again in the studio a few days later at the Scuola di Hamlyn Florence and Almadanza, Bologna for two workshops taught by Julie Cronshaw and Danish trained, Bournonville dancer, teacher and researcher, Peter Brandenhoff. The Ballet Reign team joined the workshops and compiled a documentary length video of their experience.

Here is the link: https://youtu.be/Q5nHWXTMuzg?si=2DPOKr59OhQJDanh

After the workshop in Florence at the historic Hamlyn studio, where Ballet’s Secret Code was filmed in 2015, the students posed for a group photo.

 

Thank you so much to Alessandra Alberti, Elisa Corsini and Nicoletta Santoro who helped organise the event, and to Marina Korableva who accompanied the classes.

 

 

 

 

Group photo taken after the Bologna workshop.

A huge thank you to Pier Paolo Gobbo, director of Almadanza at Bologna, for hosting the second workshop ‘Bournonville meets Cecchetti’ on Tuesday 27th October 2025 and for organising the publicity and social media marketing for both Italian workshop events!

Thank you also to Katharine Kanter of the Auguste Vestris Society for supporting both events, providing translations and research assistance!

Look out for an extensive report on Cecchetti meets Bournonville in the Studio, October 2025 on  http://www.thececchetticonnection.com/,

Coming soon!

Nutcracker and Other Suite Things Christmas Performance, 10th December 2025

Thirty five Highgate Ballet School students ages 8 to 18 took part in our annual, seasonal charity workshop and performance in the lovely chapel space at the URC and raised over £700 for CAWs, the Winter homeless shelter. Photos of the event are on the school’s Facebook page. A huge thank you to Valerie Borg, Pamela Tinker, Ros Halpern and all of the backstage volunteers who helped make the evening such a success!

Cecchetti Classical Ballet Awards 2nd November 2025: Mabel Ryan Competition Success

Congratulations to all the HBS dancers who took part in this year’s Cecchetti Classical Ballet Awards which took place at Elmhurst Ballet School, Birmingham on Sunday 2nd November: Lily El Mir, Taia Goehring, Melissa Caglar, Emmy Williams, Frances Webber, Eleonora Colista, Alexi Mutasa, Sophie Ollier, Marlie Bethel, Bella Lundgaard and Jess McDonough. Our 11 dancers, in all four age groups danced onstage, performing classwork and a solo which were adjudicated for technique, presentation and musicality. The Awards require a lot of preparation and rehearsal and every year, the standard of dancing in the competition which is aimed at non vocational, or ‘after-school’ dancers is always very high. Well done indeed to Alexi, Marlie, Melissa and Sophie for gaining Commendations in their sections, to Lily for winning the Runner Up in the Lower Junior Award and to Jess for winning the Senior Mabel Ryan Award! This has been a very good event for our dancers to prepare for and attend and we hope that even more dancers will participate next year when the competition returns to London in November 2026.

Look out for photos from the day on our Facebook page!

 

External Associate Programmes: more HBS students’ acceptance success

Congratulations to Jess McDonough and Marlie Bethel who were accepted onto the Central School of Ballet Associates Programme for the school year 2025-2026.

Congratulations to Sophie Ollier who was accepted onto the English National Ballet School Associates and Cecchetti Senior Associates Schemes for 2025-26

Congratulations to Alexi Mutasa who was accepted onto both the Ballet Black Associates’ and also the Cecchetti  Senior Associates Scheme for 2025-26.

Congratulations to Georgia Forsyth, Lily El Mir, Vivienne Scott-Bryan, Melissa Caglar, Chloe Forsyth, Eleonora Colista and Emmy Williams for gaining places on the Cecchetti Associates Scheme for 2025-26.

Congratulations to Frances Webber who continues on the CAT Scheme at The Place for 2025-26

 

More Success Stories from our talented pupils!

Tilda Marriage Massey has been accepted into the Rambert School Vocational Programme to start in September 2025.

Micah Wei has been accepted by Tring Park School of the Performing Arts to start on their vocational Ballet programme in September 2025.

Emily Licis auditioned succesfully for the Northern School of Contemporary Dance which is a recognised national conservatoire for dance training in England and is starting in September 2025.

Vivienne Karawan has been accepted into Young Dancers Academy to start in September 2025.

Marlie Bethel and Emily Licis have been accepted by audition into the National Youth Ballet. This is a Summer School and performance programme for vocational and pre-vocational ballet students based at Elmhurst Ballet School, Birmingham, and takes place in August 2025.

Exam Success

Congratulations to all the dancers who took their ballet exams in March 2025! Everyone passed with Merit or Distinction! Well done in particular to the vocational exam candidates Eva Aziz Picardet who gained Distinction and Isla Jones who gained Merit in Cecchetti Intermediate and to candidates Bella Lundgaard and Jess Mcdonough who both gained Distinction in Cecchetti Intermediate Foundation.

 

Nutcracker and other Suite Things Performance at the Highgate URC raises £900 for charity!

On Wednesday 11th December 2024 more than 50 HBS dancers ages 7-18 took part in our our hugely popular pre-Christmas performance in the chapel space at the URC. The church was seasonally decorated and before the show the audience enjoyed a glass of mulled wine and a mince pie. The performance is now a favourite event on the HBS calendar and takes place each year after the annual Carols in Pond Square. Minister Jonathan Abernethy Barkley opened the show with a charity address calling all to support the annual winter weekend shelter at the URC, which is organised by C4Ws, churches in Camden providing winter shelters for the homeless.

This year we raised £906.44 in donations for the charity. Thank you to everyone to helped to get the dancers rehearsed and ready to dance on 11th December!

 

More Congratulations!

Some excellent ballet exam results have been gained by our senior level dancers in December 2024. Micah Wei gained distinction and Lara Cohen, Mia Skovsende and Rebecca Marinelli gained Merits in the Cecchetti Intermediate exam.

Emily Licis gained distinction and Abigail Price gained a Merit in the Cecchetti Advanced 1 exam. Emily and Abigail can be seen in action on World Ballet Nerd Day, on the Ballet Reign YouTube channel. Well done indeed!

Jess McDonough has gained a place on the Tring Park Associates Scheme which takes place on alternate Sundays during term time.

Marlie Bethel was talent scouted at the Cecchetti Classical Ballet Awards in November and  has been invited to join the Cecchetti Scholars starting in January 2025. Well done indeed!

Another Awards result, Eleonora Colista has been invited to attend a One Day Ballet Workshop at Central School of Ballet.

Well done to Alexi Mutasa, Eleonora Colista, Frances Webber, Marlie Bethel and Sophie Ollier who took part in the annual Cecchetti Children’s Awards this year which took place on Sunday 17th November 2024 at Central School of Ballet in SE1. Eleonora and Alexi gained Commendations in the Lower Junior and Junior Sections.

Congratulations to Jess McGillion who  auditioned successfully for the Tring Classical Ballet Academy Sunday programme and joins from January 2025.

 

HBS dancers feature on World Ballet (nerd) Day 2nd November 2024

and a dedication to Richard Glasstone

Abigail Price and Emily Licis featured in the first ever online World Ballet (nerd) Day hosted by the delightful Ballet Reign team aka Jordan and Eden. These two young balletomanes have a popular Youtube channel called Ballet Reign and when the Royal Ballet decided not to produce World Ballet Day 2024, Jordan and Eden invited dancers and teachers from around the world to send videos in for Ballet Reign’s own version they called World Ballet (nerd) Day! Here is the link:

https://youtu.be/-kSoNfg5IEQ?si=VdgI3A6PBTwKOFJd

Abigail and Emily were filmed doing the Cecchetti Advanced 1 traditional syllabus by George Massey (who produced Ballet’s Secret Code). The class was dedicated to Richard Glasstone MBE, master teacher of the Cecchetti Method, who passed away on 1st October 2024.

 

Goodbye and Good Luck!

Congratulations, Goodbye and Good Luck to long term HBS student Tilda Marriage- Massey who has gained a place at Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance and danced her final summer performances with the National Youth Ballet! Goodbye and good luck to Emma Scott who attends  LSE next year.

Emily Licis has a deferred place at The Place for Dance and continues at HBS until July 2025. She joined the Rambert Saturday Dance Programme for aspiring dancers for 2024-25. Micah Wei retains his place on Cecchetti Scholars and Cecchetti Associates.

Bella Rose Schilling and Sophie Ollier have gained places on the Cecchetti Scholars programme for 2024-25.

Chloe Forsyth, Eleonora Colista, Frances Webber, Marlie Bethel, Melissa Cagler, Naomi Horn, Sophie Ollier and Taia Goehring have gained places on the Cecchetti Associates Scheme for 2024-25 and Frances Webber has also been accepted onto CAT at The Place for the next academic year.

 

POSTCARDS

Highgate Ballet School Performance Weekend at the Arundel Centre, Channing School Highgate N6 on Saturday 6th and Sunday 7th July 2024

Congratulations to all the dancers in Primary and above who took part in three performances at the theatre located in Channing School over a very busy weekend! Guest artist Elsa Pountney a former student at HBS now at the Grad Pro programme in Birmingham, graced us with a variation from La Bayadere.  Thank you so much to all the backstage helpers and volunteers for assisting with chaperoning and costumes and a huge thank you to Pamela Tinker for all the additional costumes and alterations!

Thank you So Much Maddy!

It is with huge sadness that we say a partial goodbye to Maddy Wynne – Jones who is leaving us temporarily after 17 years of dedicated teaching and will be hugely missed! It won’t be for long though and she will be back to do workshops and hopefully to teach at HBS regularly in the very near future.

Goodbye to Flor!

We say a sad farewell to Florencia Riverti our contemporary dance teacher as she leaves HBS to work here and abroad, as a freelance dancer and choreographer. Flor will continue to work with us as a guest teacher for workshops so we hope she will not be gone for too long!

 

Old News

Highgate Ballet School Dancers perform in the second annual pantomime with the Philippian Players at St Philip’s Church Hall, Finchley, 18th and 19th January 2024

Senior dancers from the unset class and junior dancers from contemporary dance performed in ‘Aladdin’ in 3 performances on 18th and 19th January 2024. Directed by former HBS dad Jean-Marc Evans who was a Philippian player in his childhood, the dancers were warmly welcomed by cast and audience alike. This is the second time Highgate Ballet School dancers have taken part in a most enjoyable local performance event and we look forward to them dancing again at the next pantomime in December 2024.

 

Annual Nutcracker Performance: Wednesday 13th December 2023

 

Our annual popular and much anticipated charity performance of The Nutcracker (and other suite things) took place in the beautiful chapel space of the URC at the end of the autumn term and the building was packed out by an enthusiastic audience of mums, dads, grandparents, siblings, former HBS dancers and friends! After the performance, buckets were passed around to raise money for the annual winter homeless shelter which hosts up to 20 guests on Sunday nights in the URC between November and February. This year’s charity grand total was £719! Photos of the performance by Karolina Webb will be posted on HBS social media pages.

As a very special highlight of the performance this year, guest artists Elsa Pountney and Ivan Kiselov delighted everyone with the spectacular Nutcracker Pas de Deux. Elsa Pountney is a former pupil at HBS and joined the new Carlos Acosta Scholarship programme beginning January 2024. Ivan Kiselov is a student at the London Studio Centre and is a former Danish U19 Ballroom Dancing champion. We look forward to Elsa and Ivan dancing as guests with HBS again next year!

Congratulations to our dancers  2023-2024

The Annual Cecchetti Classical Ballet Awards aka Mabel Ryan Awards took place at Elmhurst Ballet School Birmingham, Sunday November 19th 2023 and several HBS dancers took part in this prestigious event. Well done to Marlie Bethel and Frances  Webber who were commended in the Lower Junior Section and to Eneliz Saipi, Lara Cohen and Sara Lebetiou  who were commended in the Senior Section of the Awards!

CONGRATULATIONS 2023!

Micah Wei has been promoted to the Senior Group of the Cecchetti Scholars for the school year 2023-24.

Emily Licis, who trained in Brighton and is a former Cecchetti Scholar Group 2, joins HBS this year in the Advanced 1 class.  She is also dancing with English National Ballet Associates.

Chloe Forsyth, Frances Webber, Naomi Horn, Sophie Ollier, Marlie Bethel, Lara Cohen, Rebecca Marinelli, Micah Wei and Amyas Norman have all successfully gained places by audition for the Cecchetti Associates Programme which is a popular monthly Sunday ballet and dance class scheme for non-vocational students who study Cecchetti.

Isabelle McNamara has gained a place on the Dancer’s Degree Course at Rambert Ballet School starting September 2023

Eleanor Campbell has gained a place on the Dancer’s Degree course at the Barcelona Institute of the Arts in Spain from September 2023

Tilda Marriage-Massey has successfully auditioned for National Youth Ballet again this year and who dances also with the Rambert Associates and English National Ballet Youth Dance Company.

Well done to all the dancers who have taken and passed their ballet exams this year from Primary to Intermediate Foundation and all the Grades in between!

Look out for HBS dancer Lila McNamara who features in the ensemble of school pupils in the full length feature film of Matilda!