Some of Frederick Ashton's most charged choreography lies scattered in old gala pieces and in fragments of lost productions, so for the latest programme in its Ashton 100 season, the Royal has gathered together some of the lesser known miniatures in the choreographer's repertory. Sandwiched between the jewelled perfection of Scenes de Ballet and the lushness of Daphnis and Chloe are six divertissements dating from 1939 to 1976.
Because of their historic nature, though, some of this material is very fragile - and on Saturday night we saw only gleams and tatters of their original quality. Ashton famously complained that modern dancers are afraid of looking camp and it's depressing to see how few of the current generation can get their bodies around his style, with its swooning, fizzing freedom in the upper body, its detailed and exuberant footwork. It's depressing, too, how few can find a way into the core of musical sensation and emotion at the heart of Ashton's choreography.
To be fair, the five-minute span of these diverts concentrates the challenge. The two oldest pieces are actually extracts from a full ballet, Devil's Holiday (which Ashton made in New York); wrenched from their narrative context, it's hard for the dancers to make full sense of them. Viacheslav Samodurov does pretty well, possessing both the physical stretch and dramatic verve to flesh out the male variation, but Isabel McKeen in the pas de deux plays safe and dull.
Jamie Tapper is likewise a stolid Aurora in the dreamily tender Awakening pas de deux, but no one should underestimate how hard it is to find the balance in Ashton's work. Carlos Acosta and Leanne Benjamin might sparkle with crowd-pleasing flash in the Voices of Spring duet but the rising pulse of ecstasy is missing, just as it is missing from the otherwise exotic pairing of Thiago Soares and Mara Galeazzi in the Thais pas de deux.
It's left to Tamara Rojo, dancing Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan to close the historical gap. Rojo dares, as Duncan did, to range from childlike simplicity to diva histrionics - and, as Duncan did, she animates the stage with the force of her imagination. It's a heroic performance and Ashton would surely have loved it.
· In rep until November 25. Box office: 020-7304 4000.
