La Fete Etrange
The beautiful and elegant Darcy Bussell - who looks as if she is nine feet tall when she unfolds, with infinite grace, one of her legs or arms, though she is in fact not much taller than any other ballerina in the company - is an exquisitely feeling Bride in this strange and pessimistic tale loosely based on Alain-Fournier's 'Les Grandes Meaulnes'. The melancholy and reflective nature of the piece suits her elegance, and allows her to show just how much a controlled evolution of gesture can drip with significance and emotion, beauty and despair, all in the same long-held moment.
      Everything about Bussell extends. She makes time stand still; the length of her stretch is preternatural, as if she commanded space at will; she floats in the air, whether jumping or lifted, impossibly long. She takes movement, space, and the fractions of passing seconds, and elongates them into something exquisite. One could watch her for ever, and never get enough. It is not all skill, though there are tanker-loads of that; it is natural endowment, an innate magic that casts a spell even in the least gesture.
      Ricardo Crevera was a delightful Boy, quick and eager, with a kind of spaniel anxiety shimmering in every posture: a creature of promise.
      Both Darcy Bussell and Crevera shone in this, despite the slightly lacklustre material in the choreography, which despite giving them some beautiful moments has a certain shapelessness, and makes its narrative points rather abruptly and unconvincingly. But of course neither the story, such as it is, nor what is given to the other dancers - apart from the delightful mandolin dance, well done here by an excellent trio - much matters, given the delicious fact of Darcy Bussell and the interesting promise of Ricardo Cervera.
      The lighting began by being so dim that the dancers were obscured in shadow for a time, and even when it brightened it had so twilight a quality that it was not much better. There was no clear reason - any more than there was clear vision - for why the dance had to begin in half-obscurity, and it only succeeded in annoying.

Pierrot Lunaire
Everything best about Ivan Putrov is drawn from him by this demanding, long, witty and theatrical role. He has to be a gymnast, actor and dancer in one; and he makes the blend a transcendent thing, an elastic display of continuous motion and emotion that winds round the scaffolding tower on the stage and across the space surrounding it like a living arrangement of rubber bands. Dancing James in 'La Sylphide' last week showed his correctness and restraint, and his quintessentially Russian manner as a romantic lead. Here is far more himself, a refugee from restraint, and brilliantly eloquent in the role as a result.
      Deidre Chapman is an assertive Columbine. She manifests a striking ability to convey character and narrative meaning with resourceful economy. She is less involved physically in the three-way interactions than her male partners, but one is always conscious of her on stage as a rich presence; and she rises with aplomb to the challenge of having to indulge in gymnastics too.
      Carlos Acosta as the manipulative Brighella is his usual imposing and powerful self, evidently enjoying himself in the role, which gives scope to large free high-octane movement and vigorous physicality. This reviewer last saw him on the New York stage earlier this year, thrilling the audience in Fokine's Le Spectre de la Rose. The fact that he brings the same characteristic vitality to everything he dances shows what a distinctive artist he is; he is always Acosta whatever he does, strong and vigorous, a phenomenon of energy on the brink of exploding.
      The only drawback with this interesting Glen Tetley piece is the rebarbative and unmeaning Schoenberg score, which begins to wear on the nerves after a time, even though much alleviated, as here, by the high skill of the dancing and the wit, perceptiveness and dramatic frisson that plays through the choreography like electricity.

Marguerite and Armand
Massimo Murru, standing in for Jonathan Cope, is a splendidly striking and passionate dancer. His actor's instincts drove him to sob audibly over the dead body of Marguerite in the closing moments - an innovation that much widened the audience's eyes. He and Sylvie Guillem, whose special brand of fragility and expressiveness has made the part of Marguerite her own, magnificently convey the desire, profundity of love, anguish, and final ecstasy of reunion in the most beautiful and convincing way. It was gripping to watch.
      This lovely and moving ballet is one of Ashton's most distinctive works. It is redolent of his genius not just for telling a story with almost miraculous economy, but for exploring and explaining emotion, and for finding exactly the right gesture or configuration that expresses the entire complex of such feelings as soul-wrenching love and the grief of loss.
      Perhaps admiration for Ashton's genius makes one believe that his ballets shape the artists who dance them, so that if they have high talents of their own the fusion of what he asks of them and what they have to give makes a higher synthesis out of both. But watching so touching a ballerina as Sylvie Guillem inhabit Ashton's dance as if it had been made on her, fitting her vulnerable, delicate, assured, beautifully precise restraint like a glove made out of silk too fine and supple to see, one grasps that Ashton understood the possibilities of what the best dancers would be able to bring to the role - perhaps because he had such a great one to make it on in the first place.
      And if Sylvie Guillem can stand on Margot Fonteyn's points in this respect, Massimo Murru can do a very good reminiscence of the drama and flair provided by Nureyev as Armand. Granting all Jonathan Cope's many and great virtues as a dancer, one cannot help feeling that it was a treat to have the unbridled Latin emotion of Murru opposite Guillem in this revival, because it was so richly effective.
AC Grayling