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Matthew Bourne’s Sleeping Beauty, Sadler’s Well, 2022
Photo by Johan Persson

The best Christmas dance shows and ballet in London

Frolicking snowmen, magical nutcrackers and more: here's our pick of London's most festive dance shows

Andrzej Lukowski
Written by
Andrzej Lukowski
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It's Christmas, so London's dance companies are putting their twinkliest toes forward and staging a beautiful array of yuletide shows. If you want to see a festive classic like 'Swan Lake' or the immortal ‘Nutcracker’, you're in luck, because these tutu-tastic trad ballet spectaculars dominate the bill at big venues like the Coliseum and the Royal Opera House. With dazzlingly well-drilled choruses and stunningly glitzy visuals, they're the perfect intro to the wonderful world of ballet. But there's also quirkier Christmas fare at London's smaller dance venues, and they'll be added to this page as they're announced. 

Read on to book tickets to a London dance show that'll inspire you to leap off the sofa and into the yuletide spirit.

RECOMMENDED: Find more Christmas shows in London 

See Christmas pantomimes in London.

Christmas dance shows in London

  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Dance
  • Contemporary and experimental
  • Clerkenwell

Matthew Bourne has had a fresh stab at his 2005 take on Tim Burton’s ultimate outsider’s tale for this year’s Sadler’s Wells Christmas offering. There is some new choreography, music and design, but the essentials remain unchanged: this is Bourne showing off his masterful storytelling skills for a great piece of entertainment.

  • Dance
  • Ballet
  • Covent Garden

English National Ballet is bringing back Wayne Eagling's foggy, atmospheric take on 'Nutcracker' for Christmas 2021. It fills the Coliseum's huge stage with a gloomy vision of Edwardian London, complete with king rat's army and child dancers. Yes, it's not the most chocolate box pretty take out there, but it's immaculately danced by the ENB and is full of family-friendly fun.

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  • Dance
  • Ballet
  • Clerkenwell

Sure, ‘The Nutcracker’ is a family-friendly show, but there are limits to that: see it at the Royal Opera House and it’s still a couple of hours long and you can’t take very young kids along. This take from the Let’s All Dance Ballet Company is as inclusive as it gets, however: the show is a mere 55 minutes in length, and all ages are genuinely welcome, with babies and toddlers younger than 18 months able to sit on a lap for free. 

  • Dance
  • Ballet
  • Covent Garden

Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without ‘The Nutcracker’. Tchaikovsky’s 1892 piece, with its dancing dolls, feisty mice and fairies, all sugared over with snowflakes and delicious music, is probably the most popular ballet in the world. Everyone should go at least once, preferably with children. And if you’re going to splurge on tickets then the Royal Opera House’s production, now 21 years old and still going strong, is the one to see.

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  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • Dance
  • Ballet
  • South Bank

If you’re looking for a camp Christmas show, this is for you. With sexy snowflakes, some very tiny shorts, and a gender-non-conforming action man, ‘Nutcracker’ at the Tuff Nut Jazz Club (aka the Southbank Centre) is a snowstorm of fun. Just be wary of cringe. 

The Snowman
  • 3 out of 5 stars
  • Theatre
  • Children's
  • Holborn

Birmingham Rep’s ballet spin-off of Raymond Briggs’ dreamy Christmas classic is back in London once again. Unlike the ageless book and TV animation that inspired it, it’s creaking a little – but it is a classic in its own right, and still inspires rapture in the two-to-eight-year-old target audience and nostalgic sniffles in their middle-aged parents.

Find more festive shows in London

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