In February 2025 we opened the brand-new Sadler’s Wells East as part of East Bank in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Stratford. Our new fourth theatre is home to everything from hip hop to ballet, rave to rhumba and kathak to krumping, with a flexible auditorium – a national powerhouse for making, creating and sharing dance.

We shared dance with over half a million people at our theatres in London, presenting 96 companies from the UK and abroad and over 650 performances.

We delivered over 100 international touring dates in 15 countries and showcased award-winning dance films, documentaries, live performance captures, workshops and podcasts for free with 1.7million views of our Digital Stage content.

We connected with 33,000 people in every corner of the country through our learning and engagement programmes and 199 artists participated in our range of artist development programmes.

In January we launched a brand-new biennial prize, the Rose International Dance Prize, for original dance creations in any style from across the globe. Sadler’s Wells presented seven shortlisted pieces, across two categories – the Rose for full length-work and the Bloom for shorter pieces by choreographers with less than 10 years’ experience. Each work was selected for its top choreography, distinctive style and performance quality.

A jury of four judges; Professor Christopher Bannerman, PJ Harvey, Karthika Naïr and Dame Arlene Phillips awarded the inaugural Rose Prize of £40,000 to Christos Papadopoulos for LARSEN C. Alongside the Rose Prize, the Bloom Prize of £15,000 went to Stav Struz Boutrous for Sepia, celebrating artists with up to ten years of choreographic experience.

We supported artists at every life stage

We continued to deliver a range of artist development programmes to support artists at every stage of their career and nurture new talent. A cohort of 8 emerging choreographers completed the two year South Asian Dance Development programme. In 2023/24 we supported artist Becky Namgauds as part of our Time and Space commissions, this led to the creation of The Heat this year, which premiered in the Lilian Baylis Studio. We continued our programme of mentoring, artist-led sessions and commissioning with a focus on practice development over production-based outcomes. We look forward to supporting artists to create work in the upcoming cycles of these programmes.

The National Youth Dance Company, run by Sadler’s Wells, welcomed their thirteenth cohort of 32 dancers from across England in October 2024, led by Guest Artistic Director Boy Blue. Founded in East London by composer Mikey J Asante MBE and choreographer Kenrick ‘H2O’ Sandy MBE, Boy Blue is one of the most celebrated UK hip hop dance theatre companies. The young dancers completed residencies across England including in Ipswich and Birmingham to create their brand-new show Gravity, before premiering in Leeds in April 2025. Since its inception 364 dancers have passed through the company, working with such renowned dance artists as including Oona Doherty, Wayne McGregor, Alesandra Seutin, Russell Maliphant and Botis Seva.

24/25 saw the culmination of the first year of Making Moves, our nationwide choreography and performance project for young people aged 11-18. This involved 9 school and youth groups performing work they had created with us, on the Sadler’s Wells stage in July 2024. 44 schools and youth groups and over 700 young people from every region of the UK participated in workshops as part of the second year of Making Moves, 11% of participating groups were either SEND schools or youth groups for young people with learning disabilities.

Breakin’ Convention Youth Dance Classes began in April 2024, with recruitment underway ahead of the opening of Academy Breakin’ Convention in Autumn 2025. And Sadler’s Wells resident Company of Elders and ZooNation Youth Company collaborated on The Exchange, featuring dancers aged 11-81.

Making Moves
Image © Ellie Kurttz

We created and shared more work than ever before

We embarked on a new chapter to bring people to dance in new and exciting ways. Our teams worked hard to establish a new model of delivering our programme across four stages, alongside the management of six new studios for creating dance at Sadler’s Wells East alongside our existing three studio spaces. We welcomed 43 UK companies to our four stages – from London, Leicester, Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds, Newcastle and Cardiff – together with 53 international companies. Alongside this we commissioned UK companies from Glasgow, Leicester, London, Kent for the creation of new work.

World-renowned choreographer and dancer Akram Khan delved into his past in his creation GIGENIS: The generation of the Earth as part of the autumn season. New work was presented from our Associate Artists Michael Keegan-Dolan, Akram Khan and Hofesh Shechter, Oona Doherty, Crystal Pite, Seeta Patel, Jules Cunningham, Jasmin Vardimon and Matthew Bourne and our International Associate Company Rosas led by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. Associate Artist Wayne McGregor brought together art and AI to create the 95th and 96th iterations of Autobiography. Gabriela Carrizo won Best New Dance Production at the Olivier Awards for La Ruta, part of Netherlands Dans Theatre – NDT1. The category nominations reflected the breadth of work presented across our stages – from Bharatanatyam to tap, dance theatre to Xhosa and contemporary African styles.

The Rose Choreographic School brought together 13 artists, from over 400 applicants, to explore their choreographic enquiries and to collectively imagine a school through which knowledge and practices can be developed and shared.

Producing and touring activity delivered a year of international success and artistic excellence. Message in a Bottle completed a record-breaking world tour with 175 performances across 24 cities in 7 countries, reaching an audience of 128,000 and was released in 500 cinemas across the UK in partnership with the Royal Ballet and Opera .

The Rite of Spring/common ground[s] toured to Europe and Asia, concluding with a standout week in Shanghai as part of the China Shanghai International Arts Festival. Meanwhile Kontakthof – Echoes of ‘78, a Sadler’s Wells, Pina Bausch Foundation and Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch production, received its world premiere in Wuppertal, to critical acclaim.

Message in a Bottle – Record-breaking tour: 175 shows, 24 cities, 7 countries, 128,000 audience members.
Image © Lynn Theisen

We built connections to culture and communities

Our learning and engagement teams delivered 1,506 sessions attended by over 33,000 people. This work includes long-term local and national initiatives providing ongoing opportunities for people aged 2 – 90+ years to take part in dance and creative activities.

The opening show at Sadler’s Wells East brought a cast of young dancers from east London to the stage alongside professionals . After over 5 years of planning, it was an incredible moment to see the cast, with strong links to east London, performing in Our Mighty Groove.

Our Mighty Groove rehearsal
Image © Ellie Kurttz

This was made possible through years of engagement sessions with young people locally in partnership with Uchenna Dance. Through this work we invited 12 young dancers aged 13 – 21 years to be part of the Our Mighty Groove young cast.

This initiative highlighted our belief that young talent must be supported and nurtured; we are committed to playing a leading role in offering and advocating for better pathways and progression routes for the next generation of dancers.

This opening production at Sadler’s Wells East, saw one fifth of audiences aged 16-40 with global majority audience representation doubling.

The Dance Floor, our performance space at Sadler’s Wells East, opened for a range of free activities and events for people of all ages and backgrounds, local community groups and guest artists. And the Great Get Together brought together our community partners for a celebration of dance in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

Our new theare opened as BREEAM Excellent, a building rating which certifies that a building project has followed best sustainability practices and environmental performance.

The Little Match Girl on Digital Stage was made available to 813 schools groups across the UK.

We extend our thanks to our donors and corporate partners who continued to play a vital role in supporting our work this year through generous gifts, grants and partnerships, with funding towards our community and artistic programmes, and the opening of Sadler’s Wells East. Partnering with businesses and individuals, alongside public funding, ensures our work goes further and has a greater impact. It enables growth, resilience, ambition and risk taking; ever more important in the challenging national and global funding and financial context in which arts and cultural organisations operate.

The EVERYBODY DANCE fundraising event raised awareness around our charitable mission and raised vital funds to make dance accessible to all and support the next generation of dance makers.

Our teams embarked upon a new audience development strategy, to reach more communities, 50% of our tickets at Sadler’s Wells East were at accessible prices of under £25.

We welcomed more STEP programme participants and strengthened the diversity of our workforce, employing 473 people across the year, in a mixture of permanent and contractual/freelance roles. Our commitment to local employment as part of East Bank partnership ensured we met our target for at least 50% of new roles at Sadler’s Wells East to be taken up by local residents.

We refreshed our new brand family, giving each of our four theatres and digital stage a more distinctive character. We introduced a new strapline ‘Get Dance From Every Angle’, launched the Peacock Theatre brand and our new Sadler’s Wells East Instagram gained 12 000 in under 12 months through our focus on community building with the Olympic boroughs.