The second piece was the new Kim Brandstrup "Rushes - Fragments of a Lost Story". Very moody and atmospheric, with a marvellous score of bits and pieces of Prokofiev seamlessly stitched together by Michael Berkeley. There were two particularly striking pdd for Carlos Acosta, one with the outstanding Laura Morera, the other with Alina Cojocaru, who seemed a bit underused overall. Can't comment on the small corps, as they were dancing behind the bead 'screen' which cut the stage in two; this had a projection shone onto it (from the back of the Amphi) which flickered annoyingly, especially if you were in the Amphi. From what I could see of them, they seemed to be doing their most interesting stuff when the leads were dancing, so again, didn't really catch most of this. Not my favourite stage design, shall we say. It may grow on me though, on repeated viewings, from lower down in the House.

The final piece was of course 'Homage to the Queen' - an enjoyable romp of classical dancing, to a stirring score from Malcolm Arnold. Of particular joy for me was seeing Miyako Yoshida in 'Water'. Its always a joy for me when I get to see her dance, I'll confess. Her partner was Valeri Hristov, who was solid and able, and the other leads being Laura Morera, Lauren Cuthbertson and Ricardo Cervera, who were all as dazzling as sunlight on a river. The previous section (Earth) was led by Leanne Benjamin and Federico Bonelli, who were both faultless as far as I could see. Fire was led by Sarah Lamb, on crackling form, supported by a new cast of Eric Underwood and Kenta Kura, who both acquitted themselves admirably. The final section was 'Air', where Alexandra Ansanelli danced particularly well I thought, with what seemed to me a mastery of the music, and pleasing grace.

All in all, a marvellous night I thought - so if you've been hesitating about going, get yourself a ticket.

Rushes benefitted from a lovely Prokofiev score. The beaded curtain was very distracting, and for me in the stalls (and having had recent eye surgery) the projector shining straight out was very annoying. I think this is really an intimate pas de trois dressed up for a big stage - the corps were wasted. Good as Carlos Acosta and Alina Cojocaru were (her shoulders are so expressive), I felt Laura Morera was magnificent and fully deserved her ovation.

Homage to the Queen was given with great pomp and grandeur. Earth was galvanised by a fabulous variation from Federico Bonelli, as was Water by Ricardo Cervera. Lauren Cuthbertson and Laura Morera were delicious musical and stylish accompanying him.

Miyako Yoshida was exquisite in Water, but I wish she had been given Air which really needed her special touch. I don't think Alexandra Ansanelli has it, even though she tried hard, and she wasn't helped by a rather inelegant David Makhateli. Good as Kenta Kura was, he seems to tall for the choreography in Fire and I wondered why Steven McRae wasn't on.

A fantastic night for Barry Wordsworth and the orchestra, and nice to see Yoshida bringing him on.

Bonelli and Pennefather were most attractive in "Serenade", showing such grace and classical lines. Although Lauren Cuthbertson seems to me to have a soft, English style more suited to Ashton than Balanchine, I really enjoyed her performance and felt her dancing achieved an expansiveness that the choreography requires.

I was excited by the prospect of the Kim Brandstrup piece and have read that the music was an unperformed film score by Prokofiev. However, I feel unsure about the direction of the piece. Rushes, I think, are unedited film footage and the idea of "Fragments of a lost story" made me wonder whether I was in Stephen Poliakoff territory, where the meaning of a frame or photograph is obscure at first sight and histories or secrets are only gradually revealed.

A beaded curtain dividing the stage, upon which a flickering "count down" of an old style of film projection, partly obscures the ensemble behind it. I wonder if lighting directors ever view their work from the amphi-theatre, as the design made it very difficult to see the dancers? I really liked the pdd with Laura Morera and Carlos Acosta, with its sensuous twists and curves, revealing just how supple Carlos can be. There are shapely elements in this dance, which is intense, almost obsessive in tone. In the section with a soulful Alina Cojocaru, she appears doomed and rejected, but ultimately I remain uncertain about their relationship to each other and the meaning that they hold for one another. Even more elusive is the purpose of the ensembles and why some of the action takes place behind the "screen" and some in front of it. Is Brandstrup inviting us to reach behind the image, so to speak? I feel as if I wish to know more, but the piece seems muted and it remains a puzzle to me.

"Homage to the Queen" makes a very odd contrast and needs some polishing. Again, Federico Bonelli looked stylish and was the most assured of the consorts. It was a pleasure to see Miyako Yoshida as Queen of the Waters, but Alexandra Ansanelli really surprised me with her poise, a turn of the head that (dare I say it!) reminded me of Margot - so that she somehow captured that true regal manner.

Mara Galeazzi, Marianela Nunez, Lauren Cuthbertson and Rupert Pennefather in Serenade

Carlos Acosta and Laura Morera in Rushes

Miyako Yoshida as The Queen of the Waters in Homage to the Queen

Royal Ballet: Serenade, Rushes, Homage to the Queen, ROH, April 2008
Ballet.co Gallery Area
all images © John Ross

If you spot a wrongly named dancer please contact John direct - John Ross Contact Details

I did think Serenade looked wonderful but just ever so slightly slower and more careful than NYCB, Lauren Cuthbertson was my favourite dancer.

Homage looked less well danced than two years ago and I missed Steven McRae and Darcey Bussell in particular, lovely to see Miyako Yoshida dancing with Valeri Hristov though.

A very satisfying triple bill which I think will get even better
with more performances!

Likewise, Laura Morera shone like the star she was portraying in Rushes, and partnered with Lauren and Ricardo in Homage, we could not have asked for more. The other highlight for me was Sarah Lamb (and Eric Underwood) in Fire. Some think that Lamb is more like ice than fire, but she was meltingly good last night.

Lovely to see Miyako onstage, and dancing so well. My friend just couldn't believe she is over 40!

I wish, as someone said above, that Miyako had been given the Ashton component here, because she would have done it a lot more justice than Alexandra Ansanelli did it.

edited for typo

From midway up the amphi, the larger "leafy" blotches seemed to be in such a position that they did obscure the supporting dancers at the back for a while.

Rushes - Fragments of a Lost Story has all the hallmarks we expect of a Brandstrup production: music-driven choreography; strong and probably beautiful designs, cleverly lit; traces of his background in the world of film; and of course a story, never fully revealed. He works very closely with all his collaborators, even when they're not still alive to know about it - this time the sketches of a never-used film score by Prokofiev have been worked up, shaped and augmented by composer Michael Berkeley to give Brandstrup the music he needed, whilst their original fragmentary nature inspires the underlying format of the whole piece. The simple but very striking decor by Richard Hudson consists mainly of full-height bead curtains, which give depth and perspective to the stage picture as well as acting as shifting, shimmering screens for projected light and patterns.

Against all this we see the unfolding story of a man falling deeper and deeper into an obsessive relationship with a woman who doesn't care about him, ignoring the anguished concern of another woman, who does. We're only shown snapshots - it's like watching the disintegration of an acquaintance you see only every couple of months or so: you don't know what's happened in between, but it's painfully obvious on each encounter that the situation has got worse. Brandstrup's characters are the joint creation of himself and his dancers, resulting usually in such a close identification that it's impossible to imagine a second cast. In Rushes he's allowed two sets of dancers, working wihin the same framework, to produce quite differently inflected versions of narrative: one may perhaps resonate more strongly with some people than the other, but there's no way of saying that one or the other is 'better'. The man played by Carlos Acosta starts out as a strong character, directing his own life and choosing his actions until his obsession takes over; in the other cast Thomas Whitehead is weaker, tempted and teased by the woman until she pushes him too far and loses her control of him. Laura Morera and Tamara Rojo have the opposite balance - Morera the more passive - whilst both Alina Cojocaru and Leanne Benjamin play the onlooker with touching tenderness and despair, especially in the very beautiful closing pas de deux. Fine, intelligent performances from all of them, but leaving plenty of room for future casts to find new ways into the roles.

There's a corps de ballet too, a dozen couples who scarcely emerge as individuals. They dance at the back of the stage, often only half-seen in the shadows, and don't engage with the leading characters except as observers. I thought their choreography was perhaps the weakest link in the whole piece: Brandstrup gives them a lot of naturalistic movement and groupings, and those are deftly done and sometimes more than that, but the actual steps he sets, and especially the often-repeated lifts, look banal at times in the context the rest of what he's done. That's a fairly minor flaw, though, in a complex and fascinating work which I hope will find a lasting place in the repertoire.

It's quite hard to see anything in common between Rushes and Balanchine's lovely Serenade, which opened this programme, unless you subscribe to the idea that there's a fragmentary story hidden in Serenade too. Watching some of the famous incidents - the woman who arrives late, the one who falls - makes me think some of the dancers certainly think so: these tiny episodes can grow into mini-dramas of their own, though how they fit into the larger scheme of things I can never work out. The corps de ballet seemed to take some minutes to get going on the first night, and I've seen better overall performances from this company before, but there were still considerable pleasures to be had especially from the bright clarity of Marianela Nunez and the attack, speed and glowing confidence of Lauren Cuthbertson, in the best performance I've seen from her since her Juliet.

Homage to the Queen was revived, with mostly new choreography, for a royal occasion a couple of years ago: it seemed to me then a dutiful but empty exercise and detached from those celebrations it now feels completely pointless. The dancers do all they can but it's not enough.

But Homage to the Queen completely pointless?! Not for me! I'm obviously happy to have my ballet served up plain and simple and beautiful.

Serenade was just fabulous: I thought all the leads were superb – I could have watched it all evening.

About Rushes: I was quite prepared for it to be bad, since everyone around me seemed to have seen it the previous night and were very negative about it, especially the staging. So to my surprise I thought the staging was very effective and original and worked very well, at least from the top of the house. I didn't find the choreography very memorable though, except from the last pdd which was very beautiful and touching. To be honest, I was in the upper slips and I got a bit tired of standing to see so I may have missed something here. (Another hair point: I suppose it was a wig and Tamara Rojo hasn't really cut off her hair like Amelie?!)

About Homage: Well, first of all I was very happy because I managed to get into some empty seats in the amphi after the interval, so I got to "see" this better than the other ballets. I think it's really effective as a "company showpiece", especially in a company like Royal Ballet with so many strong principals. I like especially Mara Galeazzi and Marianela Nunez in the leads - especially with Marianela, the choreography could be made for her (was it?). The choreography I thought was of a very high level - Wheeldon's Fire is the least "Ashton" but I still enjoyed it. Just one question: I think Tamara Rojo is great but in my opinion it's a strange decision to give her Air, when the choreography requires the dancer to seem very light and airborne with this amazing jump, when Tamara herself admits her jump is her weakest technical point. But aside from that, I thought it was a great evening and I definitely will go again to the other cast!

Rushes gives us a man caught between two women. However, I though the earlier work more successful - I don't think Rushes profits by being on the large spaces of the Opera House stage and the hard work of the corps mainly goes for nothing in the dimness. I would have appreciated it more in the setting of the Linbury.