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Money is the brutally short answer. With BRB's home Hippodrome Theatre temporarily unavailable, what could be more cost effective than dancing one of the world's most popular ballets for your home crowd in a 3,000 seater venue? OK, the AT's have a point. The NIA is a black bear pit; ambience, décor and acoustics all score a deafening nul points. But producer and choreographer Peter Wright's faultless way with tradition and heritage conquers even these towering odds.

Wright is Britain's current custodian of the classical ballet ethos and his secret weapon is, no surrender. Not for him a cool streetwise pastiche to win yoof audiences, nor creaking recreations of archival originals. This is art in the grand manner and in the 19th century spirit it was intended, magnificent entertainment for everyone, art tart or school kid. Academic ballet steps are the skeleton, Tchaikovsky's music the fuel and the dancers are the flesh and blood.

Even the NIA's soulless cavern adapted itself to the cause. The stage area was halfway up the black wall, a brilliant box of magic glittering in the dark in which the dancers paraded like gorgeous dolls in purple damask and gold lame. And like magic, so focused was the watcher's eye, that the fantastical tale of the beautiful Princess Aurora's 100 year sleep being broken by a handsome Prince's kiss, became reality with remarkable ease. The Royal Ballet Sinfonia, conducted by Barry Wordsworth, was spread generously, and very visibly, across the carpet in front of the audience, two performances, then, for the price of one.

But it is the dancers we go to see and BRB delivers the goods. Ambra Vallo, Carol-Anne Millar and Molly Smollen dance with joyous attack and gutsy techniques as fairies bearing gifts for the infant Beauty while Marion Tait's evil Carabosse is a walk over for statuesque Silvia Jimenez's Lilac Fairy, whose billowing ball gown and nodding feather head dress would knocks anyone's eye out. The balancing injection of testosterone in this predominately female presentation, is administered by Andrew Murphy's Florimund who mimes ennui elegantly and dances eloquently. His brief search for the meaning of life ends with Asta Bazeviciute's Aurora in his arms, a useful dancer able to cope with one of the most demanding female roles in the classical opus, but lacking a ballerina's depth of technique and emotional impact. Qualities, however, enjoyed by Nao Sakuma in spades. She danced the infamous difficult Bluebird duet with diamond sharp authority while her eponymous feathered partner, Robert Parker somehow managed to spend more time in the air than on the stage.

Peter Wright productions of the great classical ballets are a substantial British export. But then, if he can conquer Birmingham's NIA, the rest of the world must be a doddle.