{"id":510481,"date":"2026-06-21T02:13:35","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T02:13:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/510481\/"},"modified":"2026-06-21T02:13:35","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T02:13:35","slug":"winners-of-the-2025-national-dance-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/510481\/","title":{"rendered":"Winners of the 2025 National Dance Awards"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"National-Dance-Awards-Critics-Circle\"<\/a>National Dance Awards Critics Circle<\/p>\n

The winners of the 2025 National Dance Awards were announced today at a ceremony at the Coronet Theatre, marking the 26th anniversary of the awards (#NDA26).<\/p>\n

The awards are voted upon by the 60 dance critics who are members of the Critics\u2019 Circle<\/a> and are for performances seen in the United Kingdom between 1 January and 31 December 2025.<\/p>\n

Three awards were taken back to Scotland with Scottish Dance Theatre celebrating its 40th anniversary by winning the Best Mid-Scale Company Award for the first time, and Scottish Ballet<\/a>\u2018s Mary, Queen of Scots was triumphant with wins for its choreographer, Sophie Laplane, and for Roseanna Leney\u2018s performance in the title role.<\/p>\n

The Ambassador of Japan to the UK, Hiroshi Suzuki, presented the Stef Stefanou Award for Outstanding Company to Miyako Yoshida<\/a>, artistic director of the National Ballet of Japan, for the company\u2019s tour to the Royal Opera House in August 2025. As an added achievement for Japanese ballet, the Royal Ballet\u2019s Ryoichi Hirano<\/a> received the Outstanding Male Classical Performance Award for his portrayal of the title role in Onegin.<\/p>\n

Announcing the awards, the chair of the National Dance Awards, Graham Watts<\/a>, said, \u201cIt is especially pleasing to see deserved recognition for Scottish Ballet and Scottish Dance Theatre, and for the National Ballet of Japan with its first tour to the UK, bringing it recognition as the Outstanding Company in 2025.\u201d<\/p>\n

The premier award, the De Valois Award for Outstanding Achievement, was presented by leading dance critic Sarah Crompton to Russell Maliphant<\/a>, marking an extraordinary career as one of the UK\u2019s leading contemporary choreographers and performers.<\/p>\n

In addition to Hirano\u2019s success, The Royal Ballet took home both Awards for Best Dancer, with William Bracewell<\/a> and Lauren Cuthbertson<\/a> the winners \u2013 it was the third National Dance Award for each of them. La F\u00e9e \u00c9lectricit\u00e9, featuring another Royal Ballet dancer, Viola Pantuso, dancing in the streets of Paris, won the award for Best Short Film.<\/p>\n

Wayne McGregor<\/a>\u2018s immersive film experience, On the Other Earth, won the award for Best Dance Film.<\/p>\n

The nascent London City Ballet<\/a> won the Best Independent Company Award for the second successive year. Kim Brandstrup<\/a> won his second Best Modern Choreography Award, for Breaking Bach, having won in 2016 for Transfigured Night.<\/p>\n

Having built a career as a dancer, Liam Francis took home his first NDA but as a choreographer, in the Emerging Artist category, and English National Ballet\u2019s music director, Maria Seletskaja, won the Award for Outstanding Creative Contribution.<\/p>\n

The two awards for Modern Performance went to Cordelia Braithwaite for her performance as Victoria Page in Matthew Bourne\u2019s The Red Shoes and Paris Fitzpatrick for his role as Jimmy in Quadrophenia; his second NDA, having also won in 2023.<\/p>\n

2025 National Dance Awards \u2013 winners<\/p>\n

DE VALOIS AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT
Russell Maliphant<\/p>\n

DANCING TIMES AWARD FOR BEST MALE DANCER
William Bracewell<\/p>\n

BEST FEMALE DANCER
Lauren Cuthbertson<\/p>\n

STEF STEFANOU AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING COMPANY
National Ballet of Japan<\/p>\n

BEST MID-SCALE COMPANY
Scottish Dance Theatre<\/p>\n

BEST INDEPENDENT COMPANY
London City Ballet<\/p>\n

BEST CLASSICAL CHOREOGRAPHY
Sophie Laplane for Mary, Queen of Scots<\/p>\n

BEST MODERN CHOREOGRAPHY
Kim Brandstrup for Breaking Bach<\/p>\n

EMERGING ARTIST AWARD
Liam Francis<\/p>\n

OUTSTANDING FEMALE MODERN PERFORMANCE
Cordelia Braithwaite in The Red Shoes<\/p>\n

OUTSTANDING MALE MODERN PERFORMANCE
Paris Fitzpatrick in Quadrophenia<\/p>\n

OUTSTANDING FEMALE CLASSICAL PERFORMANCE
Roseanna Leney in Mary, Queen of Scots<\/p>\n

OUTSTANDING MALE CLASSICAL PERFORMANCE
Ryoichi Hirano in Onegin<\/p>\n

OUTSTANDING CREATIVE CONTRIBUTION
Maria Seletskaja<\/p>\n

BEST DANCE FILM
On The Other Earth<\/p>\n

BEST SHORT DANCE FILM
La F\u00e9e \u00c9lectricit\u00e9<\/p>\n

The winners came from a list of 75 nominations covering every dance genre, and the nominees came from a record list of 379 recommendations (up from 365 in 2024) from the dance critics.<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated\n<\/p>\n

\"Graham<\/a><\/p>\n

Graham Spicer, aka \u2018Gramilano\u2019, is a writer, director and photographer based in Milan. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy. His articles have appeared in various publications from Woman\u2019s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the\u00a0Danza in Italia\u00a0column for Dancing Times magazine. Graham was the historical advisor on\u00a0Codice Carla, the 2023 documentary on Carla Fracci.<\/p>\n

Graham also works as a dance photographer, and his photos have appeared in many books, theatre programmes, and magazines, including Dancing Times, Dance Spirit and Ballet2000, as well as all the major Italian newspapers.<\/p>\n

He is a member of the Dance Section of The Critics\u2019 Circle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"National Dance Awards Critics Circle The winners of the 2025 National Dance Awards were announced today at a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":510482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,278],"class_list":["post-510481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/510482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}