London Festival Ballet Double Bill: Sanguine Fan & Graduation Ball

SANGUINE FAN / A stylish ballet of wit and bitter-sweet romance, to Sir Edward Elgar’s only ballet score. Originally inspired by a mythological drawing in sanguine chalk on a fan, this production by Peter Docherty represented a very special place in the repertory of Festival Ballet. GRADUATION BALL / A comedy set in a fashionable Viennese girls’ school. An end-of-term dance, to which the cadets of a neighbouring military academy have been invited, begins with formal politeness and some shyness. Natural liveliness and youthful high spirits soon break through however – particularly when the headmistress and the elderly general are discovered to have embarked on a flirtation.