The Royal Ballet has mailed details of next season to its Friends supporters, some days ahead of the scheduled press announcement:

Mayerling
Sleeping Beauty
Agon/Sphinx(Tetley)/New McGregor
Nutcracker
Les Patineurs/Beatrix Potter
Romeo and Juliet
New Watkins/Rushes(Brandstrup)/Infra(McGregor)
La Fille mal Gardee
Concerto/The Judas Tree/Elite Syncopations
Cinderella
Electric Counterpoint(Wheeldon)/New Scarlett/Carmen
Chroma(McGregor)/Tryst(Wheeldon)/Symphony in C

There will be 22 performances of Sleeping Beauty, with 8 different casts.

Jonathan Watkins and Liam Scarlett are company members given their first choreographic opportunities on the main stage.

There are some new casts in Mayerling - Thiago Soares and Rupert Pennefather get the leading role - and an interesting Agon, with Melissa Hamilton and Eric Underwood doing the pas de deux.

Full details of ballets and dates (but no casting) are now available on the RB website.

The big mystery for me is why they are putting on Tetley's Sphinx. They're throwing talent at it (casts are Nunez/ Pennefather/ Watson and Cojocaru/ Polunin/McRae) but I will take some convinving that it's worth it.