Ballet Black Marks 25 Years With Autumn Tour Across Britain

Ballet Black turns 25 this year, and the company is marking the anniversary with an autumn tour now in full swing. The Guardian has published a picture gallery tracing the ensemble's striking productions, a quarter of a century after its founding as a company celebrating black and Asian ballet dancers.

The gallery format suits the subject. Ballet Black's history lives in images: dancers on pointe, in rehearsal, in performance. The Guardian's collection, published on 16 October, steps back through the company's shows and offers a visual record of a troupe that has spent 25 years reshaping who gets to be seen on British stages.

What does this change for ballet in Britain?

For audiences, the anniversary tour offers a chance to see a company whose very existence answers a question British ballet long avoided. Classical companies have historically recruited few black and Asian dancers, and Ballet Black built its reputation by making that absence visible — then filling it. Twenty-five years on, the dancers the company trained and platformed have moved through the wider profession, and the autumn tour keeps that work in motion.

The Guardian's gallery, titled "Always on pointe: the bold and beautiful Ballet Black – in pictures", frames the anniversary through the lens of performance. Its images span the company's stage history, from its earliest productions to the current touring programme now playing to audiences across the country.

A quarter century in pictures

The picture essay opens with the strongest fact of the story: it is a quarter of a century since the company was founded. The subtitle of the Guardian piece notes that the ensemble was established to celebrate black and Asian ballet dancers, and that its autumn tour is "in full swing" — the present-tense anchor for a retrospective.

Readers who follow the gallery will find:

• Photographs spanning 25 years of Ballet Black productions
• Images from the company's current autumn tour
• A visual timeline of a troupe founded to celebrate black and Asian dancers in classical ballet

Why the anniversary matters now

Anniversaries invite stocktaking, and this one arrives with the tour still travelling. A company that began as a corrective to ballet's casting habits now carries a 25-year archive of work, and the Guardian's gallery puts that archive in front of a general readership rather than a specialist one.

What does this change for the next 25 years? The source points one way: the tour continues through the autumn, and the pictures keep arriving. Ballet Black's next chapter will be written on stages across Britain in the months ahead.