David Bintley, Artistic Director of Birmingham Royal Ballet, is being appointed as Artistic Director of the New National Theatre Ballet Company of Tokyo. He is taking up the appointment, which is for three years, in 2010. To reassure all BRB fans, the appointment is part time and is in addition to his current post as AD of BRB.

There is a press release on the BRB website:

http://www.brb.org.uk/4714.html

Tokyo-Birmingham. Now THAT's a commute!

Thanks for this JMcN

It's a nice addition for Japan and it will certainly raise the profile of the Japanese ballet community.

They need some more Western influences to internationalize their company's standard, although as someone else mentioned in another forum, I'm not a huge fan of all of Bintley's works either.

I guess the issue also comes down to whether this major Japanese company, which will probably become the leading Japanese company in a few years, wants English, American, French, or Russian influence in the growth of their ballet tradition. I think choosing the English style would probably be best for the Japanese temperament -- the cultures are more similar than other countries raised here.

Also, the other thing to remember is that:

IF ALL the most talented Japanese dancers who are dancing with foreign top ballet companies right now....

(this includes Aki Saito at Royal Flanders, Misa Kuranaga at Boston, Nao Sakuma at BRB, Yuhui Choe at RB, Shoko Nakamura at Berlin, etc etc etc etc!)....

decided to go back to Japan and join New National Theater Ballet altogether, then Japan would have a TOP LEVEL company a la ABT, etc.

Sadly, all these dancers don't want to go back because of the constraints (plus lack of $) within the system.