Not even Ballet West's most devoted fans would presume to rank this Utah-based company as one of America's finest. But a modest technical standard can almost be an advantage when tackling the ballets of Antony Tudor. Star performances and jaw-dropping virtuosity are not what Tudor is about and from the start of Ballet West's all-Tudor bill the dancers honour this. Far from seeing a second division company trying to force effects that are beyond them, we see an intelligent, dedicated ensemble focusing on the musical subtleties and dramatic nuances that make these ballets unique.
The Leaves Are Fading, one of Tudor's last works, is in many ways his most conventional - and its elegiac meditation on love and youth can dissipate into a pastel wash. Yet Ballet West's cast, especially the excellent Kristin Hakala, allow us to see and hear the tug of mortality that darkens the choreography's sweetness. Sudden pauses, like a catching of breath, accelerate the heart beat of a young lovers' duet, even as a seemingly involuntary straying glance introduces a premonition of love's passing.
Harkala is even better in Lilac Garden, where she dances Tudor's tortured heroine Caroline - engaged to man she doesn't love (Christopher Ruud) and secretly passionate about another (Tong Wang). Again, the truth is in the detail. During one tableau Harkala stands briefly between her two men, one hand resting dully on Ruud's arm while the other clutches at Wang. Wang's own tension, fraught between nerves and desire, is grimly contextualised by the chorus of friends and relations who mill around the furtive lovers, their stiff rectitude and avid, gossipy gestures sketching out a milieu of repression and constraint.
Offenbach in the Underworld is a very different work - larky, satirical and a little bit grimy - and it is also the one ballet in which the dancers' technical limitations count against them. Their footwork is sometimes too sticky and slow to keep pace with the choreography's period froth. The ensemble work, however, is terrific. The jokes are funny without being mugged, and the unnamed dancer who performs the drunken Scottish whore is a treat - her dancing is spiked with an evil eye and a foul mouth. So well did the company evoke the ballet's music hall loucheness that when Offenbach's Can Can started to play the audience clapped along. Tudor, who was raised in London's East End, would have enjoyed the tribute.
· Ends tonight. Box office: 0131-473 2000.
