English dancer Matthew Ball is a Principal dancer of The Royal Ballet. He trained at The Royal Ballet School and joined the Company during the 2013/14 Season, promoted to First Artist in 2015, Soloist in 2016, First Soloist in 2017 and Principal dancer in 2018.
Ball was born in Liverpool. He joined The Royal Ballet School aged 11 and graduated through the School. Roles while a student included Fritz (The Nutcracker) with The Royal Ballet. Awards as a student include at the School’s 2011 Lynn Seymour Competition, the 2009 Kenneth MacMillan Senior Choreographic Competition and the Gailene Stock and Gary Norman Award for Excellence. He was twice a finalist at Young British Dancer of the Year.
Ball’s roles with the Company include Prince Siegfried, Romeo, Armand, Prince Florimund and Bluebird (The Sleeping Beauty), Prince (The Nutcracker), Crown Prince Rudolf (Mayerling), Solor (La bayadère), Lensky (Onegin), Lysander (The Dream), Young Man (The Two Pigeons), Escamillo (Acosta’s Carmen), Officer (Anastasia), Albrecht and pas de six (Giselle), Matvei and Beliaev (Month in the Country), Lensky (Onegin), Wirt Roddy (The Wind), Basilio (Don Quixote) and in Yungen, Symphonic Dances, Jewels, The Human Seasons, Woolf Works, Afternoon of a Faun, Carbon Life, Scènes de ballet, Aeternum and Age of Anxiety. His role creations include Albert de Belleroche (Strapless) and in Corybantic Games, The Illustrated ‘Farewell’, Multiverse, Obsidian Tear, Strapless, Connectome, Untouchable, The Unknown Soldier and Medusa. In 2016 he was named Best Emerging Artist at the Critics’ Circle National Dance Awards. He performed The Swan/Stranger in Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake.
