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Some aspects of the programme didn’t quite gel or come together as they might: other items which on paper had not looked so enticing turned out to be much more engaging than expected. The opener, The Rake’s Progress got a somewhat muted response and one or two of the divertissements seemed to misfire on the night but overall it was a grand and celebratory occasion.

The company have not performed Rake’s Progress since 1998. The last performance was in the more intimate setting of the Barbican, which suited the modest scale of the work and brought the madhouse scenes into intense proximity with the audience. Here the action is confined to an artificial proscenium within the real one – it all lends further distance to the result, and one sensed an initial lack of involvement and response on the part of the audience. Kobborg, as the Rake, looks absolutely at home in eighteenth century costume and wig, and convincingly dim in the opening scene surrounded by hangers on after his new found wealth. Stephen McRae as the jockey and Paul Kay as the dancing master were the standout performers in a somewhat mixed ensemble. Overall though, the production didn’t seem to zip along with the same verve and vigour as I recall, and I didn’t feel as touched by Morera’s Betrayed Girl as I ought to have done. Kobborg flailed and twitched his way to death in the madhouse with commendable intensity but I think there is more to be got out of this work yet.
 

It was the middle section of the programme that most particularly resembled a large box of chocolates on which to gorge. Each decade from the 1930s onwards was represented by a short extract from work created in that period. It was a mix of some much loved items often found on gala programs (like the Romeo and Juliet pas de deux) with some more unexpected items.

It certainly started with a bang, with Samodurov performing Satan’s solo from De Valois’s Job, from 1935. I don’t think I have ever revised my opinion of a dancer quite so radically before on the strength of a few minutes performance. Previously I had found him rather bland: here he seemed to be completely engaged in heart and mind and prowled the stage with huge and malevolent intent. (in previous performances I recall the character had more body paint in the style of a William Blake painting: this seemed to be absent). Following on from this, though, the next excerpt just didn’t seem to work. Yanowsky danced a very brief excerpt from Dante Sonata – the strange head tossing solo originally for Pamela May. In the context of the entire work, made in wartime and revived recently by BRB, this is an agonised expression of anger and despair, barefoot and expressionist: wrenched from its context, sadly it looked like a shampoo advert.

Things didn’t quite solidify with Ashton’s Birthday offering pas de deux from the 1950s, given a rather tentative performance by Jamie Tapper and Rupert Pennefather. It is a lovely work but we were left a little too aware of how tricky some of those balances are. After this however, came the perennial crowd pleaser of the Romeo and Juliet Balcony pas de deux, with Rojo and Acosta. It’s always difficult in these excerpts to raise the emotional temperature to the level that you expect in the full length work, but these two certainly gave it a go. Yes, of course the technique is fabulous but for both of them it seems a means to an end – showing us the intoxication of love – rather than an end in itself. They got a wild response from the audience, only finally checked by opening the curtains for the next number.

Marianella Nunez and Thiago Soares had the tricky job of following that with the Bethena Waltz from MacMillan’s Elite Syncopations, representing the 1970s. They looked as if they were having a great time – the flashing, flirty glances might have belonged in a tango rather than a waltz. The onstage band playing Scott Joplin seemed rather thin in numbers compared to the full production. In contrast the Rhapsody pas de deux (Yoshida, Bonelli) from the 1980s was all limpid elegance and clarity.

The 1990s were represented by Bussell and Bolle in the Farewell pas de deux from Winter Dreams. This was beautifully danced and Bolle partners Bussell with great care but the passion seemed acted rather than felt. Perhaps by this time another piece of Christmas pudding, as it were, was not such a good idea. The last item, the duet from McGregor’s Qualia, was a suitably cool, astringent contrast to the lushness of the McMillan, and was given a very fine, razor sharp performance by Watson and Benjamin.

The final work on the programme offered us the work of three further British choreographers after the four we had already seen. Frederick Ashton made Homage to the Queen to celebrate the Queen’s coronation in 1952. Ashton’s Air section (for Fonteyn) survived and has been intermittently revived (last seen here in 1994). Monica Mason asked David Bintley, Michael Corder and Christopher Wheeldon to remake the missing Earth, Water, and Fire sections, and the result is dedicated to HM for her 80th birthday. Such a co operation was always likely to be a slightly odd mix of contrasting styles. In the event there is more cohesion than expected thanks to a careful stitching together of the opening and closing sections by Christopher Newton.
 

It’s inevitable there will be comparisons between the new sections. Corder didn’t seem to make as much impression as Bintley or Wheeldon, despite having Cojocaru and Kobborg at his disposal in the attractive music of the water section. Bintley’s work in Earth made some gentle allusions to Ashton with some “walking on air” steps for Leanne Benjamin and some twists of the torso that perhaps recalled Thais. His work was at its more abstract and classical but still retaining a pleasing warmth, ably put across by Benjamin and Bonelli, both in fine form. Wheeldon contributed some spectacular solos for Stephen McRae as the Spirit of Fire, tearing around the stage as a one man conflagration. Darcey Bussell did not look at home in the Ashton choreography as the Queen of the Air. Some of the tiny, delicate steps looked wrong on her physique and there was a general lack of the finer Ashtonian details all round in this section.

Despite any quibbles, the programme is an amazingly rich feast celebrating both past and present.