14-04-2025
Could this become the Glyndebourne of ballet?
'How would you feel about me doing a ballet in your garden?' This was the question, Matt Brady asked Lady Holly Rumbolt, whose home, Hatch House in Wiltshire, is set in exquisite grounds that include a 17th-century Dutch walled garden. Her reply was swift: 'Oh my God, I love it! Let's go find Rum!''
Rum, it turned out, was not a celebratory tipple but her husband Sir Henry Rumbold – who, luckily, was as taken with the idea as she was. And so, just a few months later, in September 2009, the inaugural Ballet Under the Stars took place: traditional ballets were stirred in with contemporary works (Brady has overseen the creation of more than two-dozen new pieces in the past 16 years), all of them performed by world-class dancers, and with a scrummy dinner served in between 'acts'.
Given the country-house setting and the smart dress code, you could describe Ballet Under the Stars as Glyndebourne for ballet lovers, albeit on a smaller scale. Nevertheless, Brady's empire is growing, and his latest venture, 'Iconique', has broadened out his vision first to Dubai and then to Nassau, capital of the Bahamas.
'When we first did Hatch House,' says Brady, 'the total budget was £7,500, for one night. And now we're in excess of £400,000, for four nights there, and over £500,000 in Nassau, for two.'
Brady, 53, is certainly not some fly-by-night impresario. He was born into an artistic family; his mother is the historical novelist Charlotte Bingham, his father was the actor and writer Terence Brady; Violetta Elvin, his godmother, was a chief rival of Margot Fonteyn's in the Royal Ballet's early days. A Gene Kelly fan as a child, Brady would go on to spend 15 years in the film business, during which, at 30, he was suddenly fully bitten by the dance bug and found himself seeing two or three things a week for five years. 'I immersed and educated myself in the art form to the point of obsession.'
He founded the impresarial Covent Garden Dance Company in 2006, while the catalyst for Ballet Under the Stars was a dance-and-dinner evening he organised at a small venue in Bruton, Somerset, featuring Royal Ballet stars Laura Morera and Ricardo Cervera. 'Laura and Ric reduced the audience to tears,' he says, 'and they threw flowers off the mezzanine balcony. I thought, this is great!'
I am lucky enough to see the most recent fruits of Brady's labours. One perfectly still Saturday evening in the grounds of Nassau's impossibly plush Fort Bay Club, a little over 350 snazzily dressed diners (including, the Connerys: Sean's widow Micheline, and his son Jason and wife Fiona) are watching Royal Ballet star Lauren Cuthbertson and former New York City Ballet principal Robbie Fairchild perform superstar choreographer Christopher Wheeldon's Within the Golden Hour. Uplit coconut palms line the back of the stage, and behind those, powdery white sand leads down to the gently lapping sea.
Idyllic, yes, but Brady is at pains to tell me that, sometimes, there is trouble in paradise. 'Whenever you do live theatre,' he says, 'there are always challenges. This year, we've had a torn meniscus, a little bit of food poisoning. We've had costumes [for an excerpt of Balanchine's Diamonds] made in Brazil that were sent three weeks ago, but unfortunately, apparently due to Mardi Gras and Carnival, the Brazilian police wanted to inspect a tutu.'
So they've impounded a tutu?
He grins. 'I think they've been using it in carnival and we'll get it back when they're finished with it. So, we had to get a replacement hand-delivered from New York. Then, I woke up this morning to be told that the 'theatre' had been emptied – 360 chairs, and all the tables. There's been a lot,' he says with a faint sigh, and he might have added that he had to change the running-order on the second night because condensation risked turning the stage into a dangerous ice-rink, and also that his photographer had to slice up a ballet barre with a blowtorch because it was too high.
As fun as it is, I can nevertheless imagine the Nassau venture raising heckles for some. After all, isn't this the noble art form of ballet being yanked about and parachuted in for the well-heeled minority of a small, far-from-rich country, while yielding little or nothing of either artistic or social use?
Actually, not quite. For one thing, there is the quality of what's on offer. The dancers – who also include English National Ballet stars Fernanda Oliveira and Alejandro Virelles, rising Paris Opera star Seojun Yoon and former Alvin Ailey star (and proud Bahamian) Courtney Celeste Spears – are from the international top drawer. And not only are the choreographers generally at a similar level, three-quarters of the 12 works on offer are completely self-contained, with not one hackneyed excerpt from a 19th-century classic.
But what of helping the wider Bahamian population? The event is conspicuously ritzy and exclusive, right down to the promo shoot I'm at on the Friday morning, which takes place not even on the (perfect) beach, but on an awe-inspiring three-mast, multi-million-pound yacht moored just off it, its sitting-room bigger than most houses'.
Brady is keen not to just 'turn up, raid and leave'. As he says, his company always uses suppliers from the local area: 'It's an ethos of ours to support everything locally, whether it's here in the Bahamas or in Dubai or Wiltshire.'
Spears herself (30) neatly distils what makes the event so remarkable for anyone and everyone attending. 'To drive 10 minutes and see this is crazy,' she says. 'And I know for some people who live in a big city, that's their norm, but for us it's not. And so, even for me as a dancer who's seen this all over the world, to have my feet in the sand, and watch a Christopher Wheeldon work with one of the world's most celebrated ballerinas – it still doesn't feel real.'
Iconique has clearly got off to a flying start, and Ballet Under the Stars is now well established. Thinking of the latter's success, though, I can't help asking Brady why, in England, country-house opera is such a phenomenon, but Hatch House its only regular balletic equivalent? Historically speaking, I wonder if the discrepancy lies in ballet's relative newness as an art form compared with opera, and its maybe half-dozen genuinely canonical works compared with opera's almost endless supply. But Brady's mind goes to more immediate, practical concerns.
'Can I be brutally honest?' he says. 'It's because it's really hard. I've spent 15 years developing and honing what we do, developing the contacts not only with the artists but also in staging, flooring, lighting, and keeping the costs within budget, developing sponsorships and agreements with partnerships – and we've barely made money.'
As that admission of Brady's suggests, the British country-house scene is highly competitive, and it is also unforgiving – one prominent opera festival has had to change its remit almost completely because of falling demand. But Brady really does seem to be on to something with these ventures. As he tells me, his policy is simple: 'Don't just bring them something – bring them something extraordinary.'
