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She won the first British dancing Oscar, the 2001 National Dance Award for Best Female Dancer, but it simply is not enough to keep up with this Spanish born artist who is rapidly evolving into a British national treasure. Every time she steps on stage she illumines the work she is in, and the role she plays in it, with a fierce intelligence and an artistic depth that is rare in the theatre as a whole, never mind simply in dance.

We are all eager for the on screen vulnerable humanity of say, Helen Mirren and Julie Walters, but when that intimate reality is on a stage in flesh and blood, and speaking to our hearts in just a dance language, then we must take the artist, and the art form, very seriously indeed. Like the first love duet when she is a girl child frozen by the sight of a boy like a rabbit in a headlight's glare; or the balcony scene an adolescent utterly abandoned to the joy of infatuation and the rapture of surrender; and the post consummation morning with her first and last lover, a swooning woman in love for whom separation feels like death which it surely is.

It is the measure of Rojo's talent that her impact is unaffected by being partnered by a Romeo, guest artist David Makhateli, disastrously out of his depth both dramatically and technically. Not only was Makhateli humiliated by Rojo's acting but he was kicked into touch by his Royal Ballet playmates Martin Harvey (Mercutio) and Edward Watson's Benvolio. Even an off form Watson, pale, glum and painfully thin, was an example as Makhateli repeatedly struggled with the steps while Harvey delivered with easy panache one of the most excessively complicated solos ever created for a man. When the ever-dynamic Will Tuckett's Tybalt crossed swords with Makhateli, the wrong man won.

Nicholas Georgiadis's 1965 sets moulder magnificently as tiers of decaying stone arches are marketplace, bedroom and charnel house dressed in deeply rich silken brocades. The production lacked the punch of recent performances but the company still looks terrific and the dancers continue to highlight fresh bits of the action, a true indication of being dedicated to your job. And then add Tamara Rojo, and not only MacMillan but Shakespeare should be very, very proud.