David Bintley

Bintley, David (b Huddersfield, 17 Sept. 1957). British dancer, choreographer, and ballet director. After training at the Royal Ballet Upper School, he joined Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet in 1976. He created roles in works by Seymour and MacMillan, but was most noted as a superb character dancer, especially in Ashton's ballets (his Widow Simone in La Fille mal gardée was considered brilliant and he inherited Ashton's role as the little Stepsister in Cinderella). He began choreographing in 1978, becoming company choreographer in 1983. In 1985 he moved to Covent Garden where he became resident choreographer of the Royal Ballet. Some of the works from his Covent Garden period, like The Planets (mus. Holst, 1990) and Cyrano (mus. Wilfred Josephs, 1991), proved to be ill-judged, although he gave the Royal Ballet a great box office success with Still Life at the Penguin Café (mus. Jeffes, 1988). His Hobson's Choice (Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet, 1989, mus. Paul Reade) was also enormously popular, revealing his instinctive flair for narrative ballets featuring more down-to-earth characters. In 1993 he left Covent Garden and worked as a freelance choreographer, creating Job (mus. Vaughan Williams) for the San Francisco Ballet (1992) and Edward II for the Stuttgart Ballet (mus. John McCabe, 1995). In 1995 he became artistic director of Birmingham Royal Ballet, where he created Carmina Burana (mus. Orff, 1995), Far from the Madding Crowd (mus. Paul Reade, 1996), Nutcracker Sweeties (mus. Ellington after Tchaikovsky, 1996), The Protecting Veil (mus. Tavener, 1998), Arthur (mus. McCabe, 2000), and Beauty and the Beast (mus. Buhr, 2003). A list of his other ballets includes The Outsider (mus. Bohác, 1978), Take Five (mus. Brubeck, 1978), Meadow of Proverbs (mus. Milhaud, 1979), Adieu (mus. Panufnik, 1980), Night Moves (mus. Britten, 1981), The Swan of Tuonela (mus. Sibelius, 1982), Choros (mus. Meyer, 1983), Consort Lessons (mus. Stravinsky, 1983), Young Apollo (mus. Britten, Crosse, 1984), Flowers of the Forest (mus. Britten, 1985), The Sons of Horus (mus. McGowan, 1985), The Snow Queen (mus. Tovey after Mussorgsky, 1986), Galanteries (mus. Mozart, 1986), Allegri Diversi (mus. Rossini, 1987), The Trial of Prometheus (mus. Burgon, 1988), The Spirit of Fugue (mus. McGowan, 1988), Brahms/Handel Variations (mus. Brahms, 1990), and Tombeaux (mus. Walton, 1993).