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The company's resident choreographers are Hans van Manen and Krzystof Pastor, and each of them was represented in the programme. (Fascinating coincidence for those who like this sort of thing: the DNB was founded in 1961, exactly 30 years later than the Royal Ballet, and these two were born around 30 years later than Frederick Ashton and Kenneth MacMillan respectively - so the company is more or less where the RB was in 1976.) Pastor's Suite for Two, made specially for this visit, is a slight piece for two of the company's principals - Ruta Jezerskyte and Cedric Ygnace - set to one of Bach's Cello Suites, played on stage by Quirine Viersen. The dancers' solos are attractive enough, but when they dance together the stage seemed cluttered by comparison with the pure clarity of the music. Van Manen's contribution, premičred last season, is the latest of many ballets set to Benjamin Britten's Frank Bridge Variations, a brilliant and rather mysterious piece which seems to have meant something entirely different to each of the choreographers who has tried it. Unfortunately it means something different to each one of the audience, too, and it's not easy to tune in to a new interpretation instantly. Van Manen doesn't try to impose any sort of narrative or theme on to the episodic score, treating each section separately: to my eye, his invention didn't match Britten's.

Rudi van Dantzig was the artistic director of the DNB for twenty years, and the works he made for the company played a major part in shaping its destiny. It's difficult now to imagine the impact of Vier Letzte Lieder when it was new in 1977 - both its look, with Toer van Schayk's fine backcloth, and its theme of love and loss have become such cliches that you can easily catch yourself thinking 'Oh no, not the angel of death again'. But even after making the effort to see it with fresh eyes, I found myself out of sympathy with the way he uses the music. The choreography consists basically of four pas de deux, and the first three were made up of beautifully lyrical phrases, succeeding each other smoothly but not building up to a strong enough emotional effect to add anything to to what we were hearing. Richard Strauss, like him or not, saturates his music with feeling, and it's only in the last song (powerfully done by Natalia Hoffmann and Tamas Nagy) that van Dantzig rises to a comparable level. I kept finding myself thinking of how Dark Elegies says a lot more with a lot less effort.
 

It was only when we reached the very last piece in the programme, William Forsyth's The Second Detail, set as usual to a score by Thom Willems, that I felt my eyes and my ears were getting the same message. I wonder how Forsyth feels about the way his early works get more popular as his current interest moves further and further away from pure dance? Maybe he hopes that one day we'll all catch up with him, but in the meantime I would hope he would at least be pleased to see the way both dancers and audience respond with exhilaration to his choreography. This performance, with the equally exciting Suite from Artifact from Scottish Ballet, have been highlights of the year at Sadler's Wells. The whole evening showed that the company has some impressively fine dancers - Larissa Lezhina and Igone de Jongh stood out particularly - and it would be good to see them back here soon.