The Dream
One constant in Ashton's variegated genius is his preternatural narrative gift. He can tell a story, paint a character, evoke a mood, amuse, move and enlighten, with extraordinary - one might almost say unbelievable - economy and elegance. In this immensely pleasing ballet he proves himself to be (if proof were needed) the very Shakespeare of dance. The quarrel between the fairy King and Queen over the changeling Indian boy, and the King's punishment of the Queen, with the incidental involvement of the lovers in the forest, is exactly the meat both of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' and Ashton's 'Dream', and nothing is lost from the former in its translation into the latter. save things incidental to the story. As much merriment is provoked by the rustics, as much consternation among the lovers, as much absurdity in Titania's devotion to ass-headed Bottom, as in the play - and all done in Ashton's graceful, vivid, superbly effective manner.
      The Shakespeare play is richly suggestive for ballet, and all the great names - Petipa, Fokine, Balanchine - preceded Ashton in choreographing it. Ashton himself was influenced by the designs for an Old Vic 'Midsummer Night's Dream' staged nearly twenty years before the 1964 Shakespeare triple bill for which 'the Dream' was made (the other two pieces were Helpmann's 'Hamlet' and Macmillan's evocation of the sonnets, 'Images of Love'), so there is a veritable tapestry of threads feeding into Ashton's version. He made it for Anthony Dowell and Antoinette Sibley in the principal roles, and these two outstanding dancers - in their own right the Royal Ballet's greatest pairing alongside Fonteyn and Nureyev - served as coaches for this performance: a wonderful continuity, and surely a large part of the explanation why it is so extremely well done.
      For well done it is: and that understates matters. The sheer strength of the cast is a prompt for admiration. It is enough to list the fine performances of all four lovers, the inimitable genius of the diminutive Giacomo Ciriaci as Puck, the handsome power and theatrical skill of Edward Watson as Oberon (can it be true that Watson thinks he is not a natural Ashton dancer? - this performance belies the claim), and the beautifully expressive Leanne Benjamin - who seems always to be constructed out of some distillation of a Venusian sea, so fluid and weightless is she - as Titania: and the list says it all.
      Everyone who has occasion to write about this ballet comments upon the fact that in the pas de deux near the end (the nocturne), Ashton achieves a depth of emotional insight which is lacking from the Shakespeare original. That by implication is not quite fair to the Shakespeare original, which never seeks to invest its comedy, mistake, confusion, dream-state obfuscations and muddles with profound philosophical reflection; its aim lies elsewhere. But there is the moment when Oberon reconciles himself to Titania: 'Now Titania, wake you, my sweet Queen', and she, waking, replies, 'My Oberon! What visions have I seen!' (Act IV scene 1). In Ashton's pas de deux it is this moment of reconciliation and renewed love that is explored, and it indeed brings out all the intimacy latent in that single exchange. It is one of the great moments of ballet, and Leanne Benjamin and Edward Watson do it full justice.

Three Songs Two Voices
There is a strong choreographic imagination at work in this vigorous piece, in which little demand is made of the dancers in the way of technique, but much is made on their energy and sense of timing. Nigel Kennedy's sympathetic adaptation of Jimi Hendrix's music is a good basis for the fast-flowing evolutions devised by Bruce, and it is a delight to have the distinctive Kennedy-Hendrix strains echoing around the august dome of the Royal Opera House, as a reminder that everything now classical was once innovative, and might once have offended purist sensibilities. Not that this work would do that: Bruce is a linear descendent of the masters of his art whose work flanks his in this triple bill, and it is interesting to see how that inheritance develops in response to new possibilities both in choice of music and the aptitudes of dancers.
      Bruce's substantial body of work is more often than not attentive to something definite and given - a biography, for example, of the Buddha, or the music of the Beatles or the Rolling Stones - and here it is response to the colours and textures of Kennedy's rendition of Hendrix that offers inspiration. It works: 'Three Songs Two Voices' is fascinating and enjoyable.

Symphony in C
Is there a more perfect piece of absolute neo-classicism than Balanchine's 'Symphony in C'? It is ballet of the ballet, and it has beauty's mesmerising power in full: it holds one's attention, and suspends one's breath, from the moment the curtain rises to reveal a typical Balanchine symmetry, poised to unfold into a succession of symmetries that flow on and on until, in the face of the audience's reluctance to let the them go, the dancers and the music stop, and the curtain descends.
      One aspect of Balanchine's genius is the way he fits the dance to the music like a glove. The music has a crystalline, glittering, cascading quality that the dance absorbs as effortlessly and swiftly as if Bizet had written a score in specific response to seeing inside Balanchine's head. The ballet was first made during the end-phase of a spell at the Paris Opera, to whose dancers Balanchine dedicated the work. When the ballet was reworked for Balanchine's own company (the 'Ballet Society', set up after his arrival in America), he did what he often did with earlier work: he simplified the trappings - costumes, design - and shed the title that suggested too much (in this case 'The Crystal Palace'), using just the name of the musical composition instead. With a more austere frame the essential nature of the dance itself becomes transparent, just (so one imagines) as Balanchine saw it in his head when he studied the music.
      This ballet figures luminously in the history of the Royal Opera House. With four outstanding principals in the four lead roles, it was the last ballet performed at Covent Garden before renovations to the house began in 1997. The ballerinas then were Darcy Bussell, Leanne Benjamin, Deborah Bull and Miyako Yoshida. What a galaxy. The move into the late 1990s was significant for the Balanchine legacy in other ways: the Kirov, where he trained, at last adopted Symphony in C into its repertoire in 1996, making one circle full.
      The best critical comment on this ballet is that it cannot be written about effectively, only seen. But one can say that it provides a water-mark for a ballet company. The Kirov did well to adopt it into the repertoire, for it is perfectly suited to their meticulous style of ensemble dancing. If there are weaknesses in that dimension of a company's work, Symphony in C could well expose it. What the beautiful rendition of it here shows is how high the Royal Ballet's standards are, and how fine its dancing.
AC Grayling