Ross Stretton may have been ousted amidst dark rumours and with hugger mugger speed, but the director's parting gift to the company turns out to be one of the brightest programmes in its recent history. The highlight is GONG, an overdue acquisition from the choreographic imagination of Mark Morris - the first of his works danced by a major British troupe.
The ballet is set to Colin McPhee's 1936 score Tabuh-Tabuhan, whose mix of Asian styles and grand 20th century dissonance unleashes a cross cultural fantasy. Morris's basic language transplants Petipa to the Siamese court of The King and I, its ballet moves infiltrated by deep flexions of the limbs, hieratic gestures, and tricksy oriental footwork. The structure is created from austere lines and patterns which, like McPhee's music, build heat and flamboyance out of repetition.
While the dance's logic seems easy to read, there are currents of high romanticism and subversion larking around that both enrich and unsettle it. Some dancing is allowed to blossom into unexpectedly majestic classicism, the dancers in Isaac Mizrahi's gorgeous costumes glitter like old fashioned ballet stars. Occasional phrases, though, are deconstructed into comically crass moves.
Morris seems almost to be dismantling his classical language with the avid curiosity of a kid ripping the wings off a butterfly. Yet while dancers may initially have found his transitions from raptness to irreverence, from beauty to B movie exotica, disconcerting, as a group they sail through with their glamour and mystique triumphantly intact.
The other two ballets are repeats from last year's schedules that both deserved a much longer stay.
Christopher Wheeldon's Tryst actually looks set to become a classic, with its shape-shifting group sections and eerily potent central duet (for Darcey Bussell and Jonathan Cope). This is choreography that is as flattering to the dancers as it is engrossing to watch.
Less successful is Mats Ek's Carmen, whose cartoon comedy skitters over the story with a glibness surprising in a choreographer of such rigorous imagination. Even so, the company perform it wonderfully, their comic instincts wildly off the leash. Sylvie Guillem as the mordant, cigar-toting heroine scintillates, as does Cope as the monstrous bum-waggling narcissist Escamillo. The company suffered miserable divisions in the last months of Stretton's unravelling directorship; it is good to see them having such a good time on stage.
· In rep until November 6. Box office: 020-7304 4000
