Memorial performances are always skewed, risky events. The person being honoured is too old or too dead to appear on stage; the live performers are competing, haplessly, with a legend; and the audience is viewing everything through the distorting lens of nostalgia. All the above and more apply to the Royal Ballet's current tribute to Rudolf Nureyev.
Audiences will be able to gauge their reactions to the evening by their response to its opening item, Memory. Irek Mukhamedov reads lines from Pushkin about a Russian in exile and dances his own version of an early solo that Ashton choreographed for Nureyev. It is heroically romantic, heroically hammy.
The most overt homage comes in the central section, conceived by Sylvie Guillem as a series of divertissements played in front of a film and photomontage. The latter delivers some wonders: Nureyev's staggeringly beautiful face is seen from every angle, his performance of Corsaire glitters in slow motion, his Faun towers on a mythic scale.
The film, for its part, works well as a grainy postmodern interface with the duet from William Forsythe's In the Middle (danced spectacularly by Guillem and Laurent Hilaire). And it offers a welcome distraction from the grimly dated trio in Kenneth MacMillan's Images of Love and the empty posturings of Pierre Darde's Surge.
By contrast, the film is an outrageous distraction from the delicately sprung pas de deux from La Sylphide, danced by Johan Kobborg and Alina Cojocaru in an exquisitely finessed performance. The busy footage is an intrusion that Nureyev would not have countenanced.
Nor would he have been pleased with Saturday's performance of the third act of Raymonda, danced in his own staging. Some of the women were fabulous - Guillem dancing a regal fantasy, Marianela Nunez blossoming in classical detail - but they were badly let down by the men. While Jonathan Cope's good humour soared over the cracks in his solo, most of his peers aimed for bravura spirit and achieved only fitful bounce.
By far the best item was Apollo. There is an obvious parallel between Nureyev's quest for artistic adventure and Balanchine's portrait of a young god achieving mastery over his powers. With Saturday's cast, that sense of discovery blazed off the stage. Carlos Acosta delayed his Olympian maturity until late, showing a larky boy being teased by his muses. Mara Galeazzi's Calliope was an intemperate, plaintive mime, Nunez's Polyhymnia was a giddy girl and Darcey Bussell's masterful Terpsichore was tender, flirtatious and severe - until the apotheosis, when playfulness gave way to awe. This was a superbly fresh performance, and as a tribute to Nureyev, it cut to the heart of the art form to which he gave his life.
· In rep until April 26. Box office: 020-7304 4000.
