Swan Lake is a ballet as much for the corps de ballet as the principals. In ballets where star dancers fix the audience's eye, such matters as design and corps performances often become incidentals which at most - and then only if something is amiss - attract one's notice to distract. But in Swan Lake the corps and the ancillary soloists matter, and so too does the design of the whole. That is why both the corps and the production deserve their full measure of applause here. This staging is a delight; and all members of the Royal Ballet from soloists to students of the ballet school danced with pleasure-inducing elan. All the set-piece moments were superb: Act I's pas de trois, waltz and polonaise; all Act II's dances; indeed to single anything out is unfair to the rest, because in this respect the evening was a deeply satisfying one.
       Valeri Hristov is a very neat dancer, crisp and elastic, well-equipped with a delightful light high jump and a real turn of speed. He is a pleasure to watch. It takes time to separate him from the crowd in the first act, because he is a modest presence at the outset, but he begins to impose himself when he has the stage to himself.
       Alexandra Ansanelli is a mystery. She has a strange allure, a certain charisma, which with her evident delight at being in a leading role gives her a power of charm. This fact about her stands alongside manifest incompleteness of technique and a youthfulness of personality which interposes itself between dancer and role - except, it has to be said, in Act III as Odile, which she danced with compelling archness; her character's wicked amusement in being complicit with Von Rothbart in duping Siegfried is well done, and her dancing is lifted by the fact.
       Ansanelli was an enchanting Ondine in a recent production, suggesting that her individual manner and non-standard aspects of technique suit her to some roles more than others. The technique question becomes important in classic white ballet roles, as in Swan Lake; here balance and absolute truth of line are key, and the variability of an individual modern style can achieve an incongruent note at times. This Swan Lake might indeed be an object lesson in the difference between New York City Ballet and Royal Ballet style and expectations.
AC Grayling