Strauss 2225: Dances for the Future, Vienna Ballet Academy, June 12th, 2026 (London)

Ballet Academy of the Vienna State Opera

Part of Next Generation Festival 2026

Choreography by Robert Binet
Linbury Theatre, Royal Ballet & Opera
12–13 June 2026

Having watched and enjoyed this particular performance very much last October 18th at Vienna’s “NEST”, I took the liberty of publishing this wonderful review by Miss Vera Liber (London). Good and visionary work like this should always be promoted, even if only during a short tournée!

Changes like this are precisely what Vienna has needed , alarmingly and urgently, for years. And I can say that I know what I am talking about when I tell you that I understand how difficult it is to change things in a “climate” of “Oh, but we have been doing this, exactly like this, for years!”.

The Season, the first one of Miss Ferri and her team in Vienna, is coming to an End - and what a year it was - but I am still repeating my “Credo” since last September:

HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN!

It makes so much sense…

Here is Miss Liber’s original text!

Ricardo Leitner

Vienna, June 19th, 2026

a t t i t u d e

Ten young international companies feature in this year’s Next Generation Festival running from Friday 12 June to Saturday 4 July: Youth Company of the Ballet Academy of the Vienna State Opera, The Royal Ballet School, School of American Ballet, Royal Ballet and Opera’s Chance to Dance, Rambert School / Junior Company of The Polish National Ballet, ZooNation Youth Company, English National Ballet School / John Cranko School and Just Us Dance Theatre Apprenticeship Company.

Quite an array… I wish I could see them all, but fear time will not be kind. I manage to make the first one out of the box. A new work by the prolific Canadian choreographer Robert Binet, the “first ever Choreographic Apprentice for The Royal Ballet in London, where he was mentored by Resident Choreographer Wayne McGregor”, looks to the future in style comparable to his mentor in 2013. He styles himself, not unlike McGregor, as choreographer, curator and leader. He also “shadowed” John Neumeier at the Hamburg Ballet in his early days.

Binet’s new work, Strauss 2225: Dances for the Future, his first (in October 2025) for the Youth Company of the Ballet Academy of the Vienna State Opera, where Alessandra Ferri is now artistic director, reveals an inquisitive, agile, wide-ranging and extremely active intellect. It is a collage of creatives—four composers, six librettists, music curator Andreas Vierziger, stage designer Shizuka Hariu and costume designer Thomas Tait. Not to mention the twelve young dancers aged from seventeen to twenty, who serve this complex work very well as his automata.

To mark Johann Strauss II’s 200th birthday, Binet’s question is “in what kind of world will people be dancing in 200 years?” Don’t be misled by Strauss’s name—there is very little waltzing, only a tad in this mash-up of music styles, experimental, electronica, jazz, ambient, lyrical, atonal, abstract, acoustic, hearts beating and more. I know a couple of music producers and am familiar with this collage of obscure samples from all over the place. I am in awe of the dancers’ muscle memory.

The programme asks (it is also up on the screen), “How will we live in 200 years? / How will we dance? / How will we make music?" In two hundred years from now, however, I do wonder will there be a world to dance in. Are these robotic AI, or bedraggled remnants of human hybrids? In thin bodies, ripped, holed and laddered, they do not seem too sure themselves. Solos, duets of undifferentiated gender, seek reassurance, I think. They also sit and watch under dark lights. Mirrors reflect light back and themselves in reverse, whilst mirrors and windows in conjunction complicate the befuddled narrative. Black, red, purple and shadowy lighting work is excellent.

Has the world regressed—what are those dangling rows of tied bunches of string, straw (I think of Akram Khan for some reason)? Is this another rite of some sort? Have we come full circle? Or are they spinning planets—in an insecure world…

Random comes to mind—the name of McGregor’s first contemporary dance company. There’s something sphinx like and inscrutable about the work. Food for conjecture... At the end, they sit in a row with their backs to us, then turn and face the world. Bravi! An hour of intense concentration—I wonder if some improvisation has been allowed…

Well done Pier Abadie, Yoonshuh Regina Joung, Charlie Keffert, Oriel Milton, Elisa Murg, Ailey Osaki, Vincenzo Petronzi, Andria Potskhisvili, Elliot Renahy, Sophie Elisabeth Schippani, Nanoka Shimada, Sébastien Urban Vidal.

Reviewer: Vera Liber