Kenneth MacMillan’s highly acclaimed ballet to Gustav Mahler’s The Song of the Earth – The Financial Times recently called it a masterpiece – runs at the Royal Opera House until 14 April.

The choreographer succinctly summarized his ballet: “A man and a woman; death takes the man; they both return to her and at the end of the ballet, we find that in death there is the promise of renewal.”

Watch a video in which Royal Ballet principals Laura Morera, Nehemiah Kish and Edward Watson rehearse the piece with Monica Mason and notator Grant Coyle: