Wayne Eagling will leave the English National Ballet this summer

Wayne Eagling will step down artistic dir­ector of Eng­lish National Bal­let, with no clues as to his replace­ment, said The Times.

Eng­lish National Bal­let has announced that Wayne Eagling, who has been artistic dir­ector of the com­pany since 2005, will step down at the end of this sea­son in August. He will be the third artistic dir­ector of a Brit­ish bal­let com­pany to leave their job this sum­mer. Mon­ica Mason, dir­ector of the Royal Bal­let, is depart­ing after ten years at the top, while Ash­ley Page is leav­ing Scot­tish Bal­let after a dec­ade as artistic director.

The ENB state­ment, which came as a sur­prise, didn’t make any men­tion of a pos­sible suc­cessor to Eagling. John Tal­bot, the company’s chair­man, said,

I would like to thank Wayne Eagling for his out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion to the com­pany over the last seven years, a time of tre­mend­ous achieve­ment. We look for­ward to work­ing with him on many pro­jects in the future.”

Eagling, in a state­ment, said

It has been a priv­ilege to work with such a won­der­ful group of dan­cers and bal­let staff. The qual­ity of per­form­ances, vari­ety of rep­er­toire, crit­ical suc­cess and the innov­at­ive work of the learn­ing and out­reach pro­grammes over the last seven years makes me incred­ibly proud of Eng­lish National Ballet.”

The ENB will be advert­ising for a new artistic dir­ector to replace him.