You can tell a lot about a city from the way it moves. Is there dance in the streets, in the parks? What are the classes that people gravitate to? How do its children learn to dance, and does the city get its groove on after dark?

This year, the RAD’s flagship event, The Margot Fonteyn International Ballet Competition, is held in Latin America for the very first time. São Paulo is the venue, and we have asked the award-winning documentary photographer Pablo Albarenga to cross Brazil’s largest city in search of its dances. Pablo finds samba teams preparing for carnival, fitness fans dancing in the park and people busting their best nightclub moves. And, of course, he visits an RAD ballet class, watching the next generation of dancing Paulistanos. It’s a visual feast.

You can tell a lot about a city from the way it moves. Is there dance in the streets, in the parks? What are the classes that people gravitate to? How do its children learn to dance, and does the city get its groove on after dark?

This year, the RAD’s flagship event, The Margot Fonteyn International Ballet Competition, is held in Latin America for the very first time. São Paulo is the venue, and we have asked the award-winning documentary photographer Pablo Albarenga to cross Brazil’s largest city in search of its dances. Pablo finds samba teams preparing for carnival, fitness fans dancing in the park and people busting their best nightclub moves. And, of course, he visits an RAD ballet class, watching the next generation of dancing Paulistanos. It’s a visual feast.

As part of our Fonteyn coverage, we also meet the Brazilian ballerina Mayara Magri. One of the Royal Ballet’s most luminous dancers, she is also the choreographer for The Fonteyn this year, creating two solos for the candidates. She takes us inside her process and her dance journey.

And there’s more! We run through London alongside a celebrated 19th-century clown. We celebrate an RAD teacher in Sydney (and cheer the RAD’s 90th birthday in Australia). In Ireland, we learn how dance teachers can make classes more accessible to autistic students. And we head to New York, where a ballerina and a Broadway hoofer compare notes on their dancing lives.

São Paulo has the right idea, my friends – it’s time to dance.

David Jays
Editor