Production values in ballet have been getting bigger and splashier, especially in Birmingham where David Bintley has so assiduously promoted the virtues of the big story ballet.
BRB's new venture of split national touring therefore seems a good idea, giving the dancers a chance to work in more intimate venues and to perform some of the smaller, less familiar repertory.
The programme for the south-west has promised novelty and wit, with the return of Kenneth MacMillan's ragtime romp Elite Syncopations plus two sparky-sounding revivals. What's sparky on paper, though, isn't always so on stage as Bintley's Les Petits Riens demonstrated.
This setting of Mozart's delicate musical confection was made for students of the Royal Ballet School; reworked for adult cast it has all the makings of delicious amuse-bouche, light and surprising. Yet it is hard to see what, beyond expediency, has justified its return.
For a start it looks horrid - the dancers' pink, white and pistachio costumes may be period but they are drably lit and their pastel palette draws attention to the etiolated energies of the choreography. It's not that Bintley hasn't worked hard - the piece is stuffed with decorative detail and artful pattern making -but the complications don't tease our imagination and the difficulties don't make our hearts leap.
Much of the choreography seems cruelly beyond the range of the cast. Apart from the ever exquisite Nao Sakuma, these dancers look barely more adroit than students, straining awkwardly for the quick footwork, the aristocratic insouciance that should be their calling card.
The blunter lines of John Cranko's Brouillards (1970) suit them better and they have fun with its riddling humour. The piece is set to nine of Debussy's piano preludes, and at best sets up a lively dialogue between Cranko's innate robustness and Debussy's very French mix of whimsy, nostalgia and romance. Its nine sections pose questions and puzzles, with duets constructed around surprise manoeuvres or misaligned partners and with moments of odd (occasionally overdone) slapstick.
Best of all is the Feuilles Mortes duet, whose atmosphere of uncertainty is formally inscribed in the dancing. The dancers' proud graceful partnerwork, haunted by crumpling doubts and hesitation, is Cranko at his most assured. Ironically, though, the work's successful evocation of Debussy's vision of transience also sets the tone of an evening that is sadly forgettable.
· At Northcott Theatre, Exeter, tonight. Box office: 01392 493493. Then touring.
