In the four years since Johan Kobborg left Denmark he's become one of the most hardworking dancers on the Royal Ballet stage. Less familiar are the traditions which shaped his talent at home.
Denmark is a nation of prolific choreographers, and Kobborg's showcase of Danish dance history contains some long overdue revivals.
Dominating the programme is August Bournonville, the architect of 19th-century Danish classicism. Kobborg rounds off his evening with the divertissements from Bournonville's Napoli but en route he teases us with a couple of the master's curios.
The rarest is The Jockey Dance excerpted from the late ballet From Siberia to Moscow. Bennet Gartside and Ricardo Cervera are a pair of deliciously silly and sportif English jockeys racing down the banks of the Thames. It makes you itch to see the rest of work.
There's more Bournonville in the duet from William Tell skittishly danced by Bethany Keating and Martin Harvey. It's always an issue how successfully foreigners can get their bodies around the classic Danish style. It looks so unaffected, yet it requires such nimble footwork and such a sharp musical ear.
Kobborg is a hard act to follow and in the ensemble work of Napoli some of the dancers look a tad slow witted by comparison. But it's good that Kobborg gives his colleagues the chance to risk a different style, good too that he floats a couple of risks in the more modern repertory. Kobborg and his partner Alina Cojocaru modulate the glitter with such affection that it acquires a sunny patina of romance.
In contrast is Kim Brandstrup's well-observed duet Afsked in which Zenaida Yanowsky and Dylan Elmore are lovers hesitating on the brink of parting.
Yanowsky's body registers a near overload of emotional nuance and she's even more extraordinary as the grotesquely disciplinarian pianist in Flemming Flindt's The Lesson. This 1963 re-write of Ionesco's play exaggerates the sadomasochism of the ballet studio, and in this show it has a near ideal cast.
Cojocaru is queasily credible as the pupil while Kobborg is a revelation as the teacher. As he morphs from sad inadequate to murderous psychopath he is a different species from the man dancing those Danish gallants.
· Until Saturday. Box office: 020-7960 4242.
