Ballet Boyz Announce All-Male Apprentice Troupe

Influential dance duo Michael Nunn and William Trevitt have launched a new apprentice company of male dancers based on the ideals and outlook of their erstwhile troupe George Piper Dances.

The company will be called Balletboyz and will feature eight male dancers aged 18 to 24. Nunn and Trevitt say the young men will undergo a “practical apprenticeship” where they will learn “all aspects of being a company member – from studio etiquette and working with choreographers to touring and the ambassadorial role of a dancer on tour”.

Open auditions take place in October with a nine-city tour scheduled for next March. Details of the programme are sketchy, but it is set to include a re-working of Russell Maliphant’s celebrated duet Torsion (created for Nunn and Trevitt in 2004) and a new commission by ROH2 Associate Artist Freddie Opoku-Addaie.

Nunn and Trevitt came to prominence in 1999 with their handicam documentaries for Channel 4 which tracked their last days as dancers with The Royal Ballet. Their irreverent good humour and unstarry approach won both critical and popular success. It also helped them launch their own company which performed mixed bills of contemporary dance linked with larky backstage footage.

As well as their new troupe, the ever-busy Nunn and Trevitt have just finished work on the BBC biopic of Margot Fonteyn where they directed the dance sequences. They are also editing their C4 documentary of The Royal Ballet’s summer visit to Cuba, and they are filming a performance documentary for BBC3 which tracks the creation of a new version of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring.