Choreographer | Sir David Bintley
Sir David Bintley
It was at the age of four that Sir David Bintley was bitten by the performing-arts bug at a Sunday-school concert in his native Yorkshire village of Honley. He has gone on to be one of the major players in British ballet: first as a marvelously musical and entertaining character dancer with what was then the Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet; next, for 24 years as artistic director of the company it became, Birmingham Royal Ballet; and now, choreographing diversely themed ballets for companies all around the globe. Throughout this time, Bintley has become one of the most distinguished neoclassical choreographers of the modern age.
Born in 1957, he trained throughout his teens and at 16 won a place at The Royal Ballet Upper School. A contract at SWRB followed in 1976, and before long he was delivering gold-standard interpretations of such characters as Ashton’s Ugly Sister in Cinderella, Alain and Widow Simone in La Fille mal gardée, Bottom in The Dream, and the lead in Petrushka.
It was in 1978, thanks to SWRB’s sharp-eyed director, Sir Peter Wright, that Bintley received his first commission with the company and created The Outsider, a work very much in the dramatic tradition of Ashton, de Valois, and MacMillan. In 1983, he became SWRB’s resident choreographer and from 1986 to 1993 held the same post with The Royal Ballet in Covent Garden. In 1995 he took over from Wright at the Birmingham Royal Ballet, while from 2010 to 2014 he was also artistic director of the National Ballet of Japan.
Bintley’s works are as plentiful as they are varied, including Allegri diversi (1987), ‘Still Life’ at the Penguin Café (1988), Hobson’s Choice (1989), Tombeaux (1993), Edward II (1995), Carmina Burana (1995), Far from the Madding Crowd (1996), The Seasons (2001), Beauty and the Beast (2003), Cyrano (2007), Sylvia (2009), and Cinderella (2010).
Bintley’s 24 years with the Birmingham Royal Ballet were not only a matter of creating new works and commissioning new scores – he also brought to the repertoire many of the great classics that embody The Royal Ballet. In March 2018 he announced his plan to retire from BRB by the end of July 2019, whereupon he was succeeded by acclaimed dancer Carlos Acosta. In the 2020 New Year Honours appointments, he was awarded a Knighthood for his services to dance. Now focused on purely creative pursuits, Bintley continues to sculpt the ballet landscape with his unique vision, serving as a true successor to the distinguished lineage of British classical ballet.
