The aim of this Nureyev programme is not just to remember a legend but to showcase the men dancing his inheritance. This is a tough call for a company that freely admits it is short on male talent.
With Jonathan Cope nearing the end of his career, and a succession of injuries and past defections depleting the ranks of junior principals, the Royal Ballet is pressed to give a dazzling argument for the current state of male dancing.
Tetsuya Kumakawa famously took his vaunting virtuosity back to Japan four years ago, and his current performances in Corsaire and Raymonda represent his first return to Covent Garden. There's no question that Kumakawa's brand of cockiness, his nose-thumbing brilliance in jumps and turns are necessary ingredients to the ballet mix.
He has the audience roaring. But the years have hardened his technique, diminishing its pliancy and its style. Particularly in Raymonda, Kumakawa appears charmlessly impervious to the subtleties of the choreography and to the needs of his partner, Alina Cojocaru.
Carlos Acosta, another guest virtuoso for this mixed programme of ballets and divertissements, has far more natural charm and range. His Corsaire solo may be brazen but he silks its party tricks with a subtle sheen, while his Apollo has the conviction of a personal journey. Acosta invests Balanchine's profound and profoundly eccentric choreography with the same sense of adventure as the character's discovery of his own powers.
Roberto Bolle also makes his guest debut in Apollo and gives a totally different account of the role. Tall, lushly proportioned, incapable of putting an elegant foot wrong, his Apollo looks divine. This reading lacks the personality of Acosta's, but it is one of unarguable beauty, and, as always, Bolle and Darcey Bussell (Terpsichore) make a flukily lovely physical match.
The London-based dancers are not entirely eclipsed, though. Johan Kobborg can hardly be bettered in La Sylphide - Bournonville is his native language and he handles it like a poet - but it is good to see Ivan Putrov in this role too. A dancer prone to over-serious display, he lets loose his huge, bounding jump with unexpected grace.
A very honourable mention must be made of Paris guest Laurent Hilaire. No one can possibly begrudge Hilaire his sole occupancy of Pierre Darde's Surge - a solo full of deep intentions and shallow effects. But Hilaire is an exceptional dancer - even more elegantly honed than Bolle, yet with a brave, questing imagination. He makes as much of Surge as anyone could, and he makes it just about watchable.
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