Watching Alina Cojocaru's debut in Natalia Makarova's Sleeping Beauty on Monday, it felt as though the production had been crafted as her showcase. With her 5ft 2in frame and Russian schooling, Cojocaru is a 21st-century sister to the equally tiny ex-Kirov Makarova. Physically and spiritually she is this Beauty's prototype ballerina.
The catalogue of small perfections and large triumphs that make up Cojocaru's Aurora won't surprise those who have watched and wondered at her career. She both concentrates and reflects a brighter light than anyone else. It is partly the detail with which her extraordinarily mobile upper body articulates and decorates each move; it is partly her split-second responsiveness to the music, scintillating at speed, sustaining long, slow melodies. But above all, it is the dramatic intelligence with which she inhabits the role. From the girlish eagerness with which she orientates all of the difficult Rose Adagio towards her four suitors, to the abstract dreaminess of her Vision scene and the grandly sexy largesse with which she dances her final pas de deux, Cojocaru reveals Aurora in all her exquisite facets.
Cojocaru comes so close to an ideal performance that she clarifies the aesthetic triumph of Makarova's production - which is to distil the perfume if not the exact material of Petipa's 1890 ballet. But she also clarifies its flaws. When Darcey Bussell danced Aurora on Saturday, her performance was not only marred by injury, but was an intriguing dialogue with Makarova's vision. In a perverse way, Bussell's grappling with a slightly alien style supplied some of the tension that this production otherwise lacks.
As Makarova has said, Petipa is not Dostoevsky, but even within the ballet's fairy-tale simplicities there is a powerful mythic strand of struggle and quest. There is courtly romance, too, as Prince Desire, beguiled by the dream Aurora, pits himself against danger to find her. Makarova's badly focused stage business (and the intrusive Cupid who essentially pimps for Desire) mutes both the seriousness and the drama of the story. On Monday it didn't help that Ethan Stiefel's Prince generated so little chemistry with Cojocaru (though he danced very handsomely).
It would be trite to summarise this Beauty as all style and no substance. Makarova has given a much needed shock to the Royal's classical technique. Given the fact that the company was dancing with even more elegance and ambition on Monday than on the opening night, Makarova's Beauty has to be greeted as an education and inspiration to a new generation.
· In rep until April 21. Box office: 020-7304 4000.
