Balanchine's ending for The Four Temperaments is always a surprise. For 20 minutes the ballet's focus has been narrowed to a series of small, eccentric worlds, each dominated by an extravagant and unsettling individual. Then suddenly the entire cast sweeps onstage and the principal performers take their positions at the head of a mass, dancing court. They look fantastic.
Balanchine's large and brilliant personages need to be inhabited by remarkable dancers, and on Saturday night the Royal boasted some of its finest. Newcomer Viascheslav Samodurov set the standard as a terrific Melancholic. While mournfulness tugged at his arched back and dolorous mouth, it was wildly counteracted by the charged, burnished shapes he sculpted in the air.
Carlos Acosta's bubbling athleticism in the Sanguinic duet was wickedly matched by the elegant, rapt mischief of Zenaida Yanowsky, and Edward Watson was a taunting, almost deviantly dandified Phlegmatic.
Surprisingly, Marianela Nunez was less than regal in her Choleric solo and there were patches of limp dancing in the female corps. But this was still a vintage performance, and with Antonio Pappano conducting Hindemith's score it was a proper tribute to Balanchine.
Sharing the current programme is a reprise of last season's Sinfonietta (Jiri Kylian) and the company premiere of Christopher Wheeldon's Polyphonia. Wheeldon makes no secret of his indebtedness to Balanchine - in fact Polyphonia is full of deliberate echoes of the master's steps. But while this setting of Ligeti piano music looks like an abstract string of dance variations, there are very personal currents beneath.
At one extreme Wheeldon goes in quest of a Platonic ideal. The sixth variation, danced with eerie perfection by Alina Cojocaru, is a study of pure, scintillating almost disembodied line. At the other extreme Wheeldon tracks his main couple (Leanne Benjamin and Jonathan Cope) down to murky emotional depths. In their final duet, danced to music of stalking menace, Benjamin twists her body round Cope in a brittle but queasily erotic trance. It's shockingly inventive choreography and shockingly expressive dancing.
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