INTERVIEW: Renaissance x Punk—Sophie Laplane and James Bonas on creating Mary Queen of Scots

Join us for a conversation with choreographer Sophie Laplane and director James Bonas, the collaborators behind Scottish Ballet’s Mary, Queen of Scots (Lincoln Center Koch Theater June 4-7 2026), which draws on the imagined relationship between Mary Stuart and Elizabeth I. The production blends classical ballet, theater, punk aesthetics, and contemporary visual language.Sophie Laplane is the Resident Choreographer at Scottish Ballet, where she creates works that fuse classical ballet vocabulary with contemporary theatrical sensibility across stage, opera, and award-winning dance films. James Bonas is a theater and opera director known for multidisciplinary collaborations across ballet, opera, animation, and visual performance.We talk about choreography, power, historical memory, and what it means to make ambitious new narrative ballet in 2026.Tickets to Mary Queen of Scots June 4-7 Join us on the Dance Lens Substack for more deep dives, interviews, reviews and lives! https://thedancelens.substack.com/ Get full access to The Dance Lens with Cynthia Dragoni at thedancelens.substack.com/subscribe