Someone at the Royal Opera House must have issued an order to put out more flags, because there were union flags and pennants everywhere: in the corridors, on the stairs, swagged around the gilt necks of the cherubs in the auditorium. The effect was a pub-like jollity, somewhat at odds with the spiffiness of an audience who had paid, in some cases, four-figure sums for their tickets. The same budget-conscious spirit informed the choice of programme, with highlights of ballets in the current repertoire comprising 10 of the evening's 11 selections.
The entrée and pas de deux from Birthday Offering was the first of three excerpts featuring Darcey Bussell. Like Margot Fonteyn, who originally danced the role, Bussell can evince a very English, very decorous glamour, and by presenting that particular facet of herself in Frederick Ashton's 1956 pièce d'occasion, she gave the evening meaning and poignancy. Later we saw Bussell in the pas de deux from Christopher Wheeldon's Tryst. This was another dancer altogether, her performance as sinuous and reverberant as the oyster pinks and raincloud blues of the ballet's designs. She was sympathetically partnered each time by Jonathan Cope. Our last sight of her was as Juliet in the balcony scene where, from first frank stare to liquescent surrender, she was all teenage abandon. Her Romeo, Roberto Bolle, was tactful and handsome, but he seemed to vanish in the rush of Bussell's desire.
There were other ballerina pleasures. Miyako Yoshida got The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude just right by treating its high-speed science as a vast joke, and Sylvie Guillem was a wonderfully ruttish Carmen. Among the men Bolle, Cope and Edward Watson were flawlessly exact in Nacho Duato's witty, empty Remanso, while David Drew has refined the role of Armand's father, in Marguerite and Armand, to an exquisite subtlety. Alina Cojocaru was heartrending opposite Johan Kobborg in The Leaves Are Fading: her dancing was weightless, suspended in Dvorak's music; he was pitch-perfect as her blithe young lover.
But why, on a night supposedly celebrating the achievements of the Royal Ballet, was it considered necessary to import partners for Guillem from the Paris Opera Ballet (Nicolas Le Riche) and La Scala Ballet (Massimo Murru)? If the answer is that Guillem insisted on it, then the tail is wagging the dog.
