English National Ballet

English National Ballet was founded in 1950 by Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin as Festival Ballet, with a mission that still defines it: to bring ballet of the highest standard to audiences across the country rather than to a single capital stage. It performs its London seasons chiefly at the London Coliseum and Sadler’s Wells, and tours nationally throughout the year. The classics remain central — its "Nutcracker" is a fixture of the London Christmas season — but the company has become equally known for ambition in new work, commissioning choreographers such as Akram Khan, whose reimagined "Giselle" travelled the world. Since 2019 the company has been based at the Mulryan Centre for Dance in east London, a purpose-built home that gave it rehearsal and production space to match its scale.