This tour is the swansong for Rambert's artistic director Christopher Bruce, who, after nearly nine years in the job, hands over to Mark Baldwin at the end of this year. The present dancers ooze excellence. Sharp and incredibly versatile, their contemporary moves undercut with classical technique, they are a credit to their artistic leader and a joy to watch.
This four-part programme is nothing if not diverse: the naked beauty of Jiri Kylian's duo from Blackbird; Bruce's punch-packing plea for justice, Hurricane (well danced by Simon Cooper, but lacking the mercurial quality of David Hughes, for whom it was made); Merce Cunningham's extraordinary kaleidoscope of cyber-dance, Ground Level Overlay; the revival of Lindsay Kemp's wonderful Hollywood romp, The Parades Gone By. It was a night to get kids whistling and pensioners waving their programmes.
It was a rare treat to see Bruce in action, obviously revelling in being back on stage, as the old film director in Kemp's masterpiece of ham, spoof and mime. Still as funny - if a bit more PC - than it was in 1975, it's a wonderful parody of Tinseltown's golden years, with the Carlos Miranda score taking in all the silent movie greats from Hearts and Flowers to the William Tell Overture.
Hunched and diminutive, holding a giant candelabrum aloft, the maestro whips the dustsheets from his memories and unleashes a galaxy of ghostly stars. Devoid of his signature beard, Bruce looks like a mini Einstein, with wild silver hair as he directs the action. Master of small gestures, he commands the stage. His old movie mogul is still gimlet-eyed, shedding the years as he dances with Dietrich - a glamorous Hope Muir with a nifty bit of tap en pointe - then slumps back in his chair. There's a marvellously wimpy Dracula from Simon Cooper, a phalanx of manic fairies and a wickedly funny Beauty and the Beast, with Amy Hollingsworth dancing on crutches Mary Pickford-style.
Study from Blackbird, new to the repertoire, is an exquisitely controlled duo from Jiri Kylian's original film. Stripped from the waist up, a stylish Adam and Eve, Antonia Grove and Fabrice Serafino dance a love song inspired by a blackbird at twilight. Full of serpentine undulations and tangles of limbs and breasts, the dance follows the haunting rise and fall of the traditional Georgian score. The couple start solo, then join together in a glorious fusion of bodies. At one point she stretches out behind him and nestles her head on his back in a moment of touching tenderness.
Pure dance, pure magic.
· At the Opera House, Jersey, until Saturday. Box office: 01534 511115. Then tours to Edinburgh, Marlowe and Canterbury.
