After a seasonal glut of Nutcrackers, dance companies in London settled into more diverse repertoire from the beginning of 2026. This latest Letter from London takes us from late January until early April.

Happy International Dance Day! Read this year's message, written by renowned Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite.

At the age of 93, Claude Bessy, prima ballerina emerita, ballet mistress, and director of the École de danse de l’Opéra, passed away today, April 23, 2026. She devoted over sixty years of her life to a single institution, the Opéra national de Paris, where she became an étoile in 1956.

In mid-March, the ballet company of Prague’s National Theatre presented its second premiere of the season to its audience: the triptych Avant-Garde, featuring two world premieres by Robert Bondara and Marc Goecke, complemented by work of Jiří Kylián.

This year’s Prague edition of the Malá inventura (Small Inventory) festival once again presented notable projects from the independent and experimental scene. In addition to established companies, it also introduced up-and-coming and lesser-known artists active in the Czech Republic.

At the start of this year, all four of my “quick jaunts” to London, Amsterdam, Brussels, and Florence to see dance were significantly disrupted.

PONEC theatre finds itself caught between two conflicting perspectives. Within the institution, the prevailing feeling is that things are moving forward and a necessary recovery process is underway. From the outside, however, the theatre is judged primarily on its results, which remain modest so far.

Starting Friday, March 13, the public space around the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic on Maltézské náměstí will become the venue for the event Art Endures (Umění trvá), which draws attention to the long-standing underfunding of culture in the Czech Republic and to growing concerns about political interference in artistic freedom.