Two Royal Ballets, one real hit

DANCE

Briefly, once a year, London audiences are reminded that there are two Royal Ballet companies. And briefly, once a year, they ask themselves why. In the past there has been little doubt that Covent Garden's is the classier act, but at the end of a year which has seen the London company flogging its classics to death for want of anything new, the arrival of Birmingham Royal Ballet armed with a brand-new triple bill gives it the air of a glamorous aunt dropping by laden with presents. Add to that the knowledge that while the London company has suffered a steady exodus from its upper ranks, BRB has been attracting star dancers like bees to honey, and you have to conclude that BRB's artistic director David Bintley, only 18 months into the job, must be getting it right.

This summer's London season opened with three short ballets all set to popular music written in the jazz age. Oliver Hindle's Bright Young Things, to Gershwin's piano concerto, goes to the social nub of a decade whose obsession with style over substance gives both choreographer and designer plenty to play with. But David Blight's 1920s dresses are lost under gloomy nightclub lighting, and Hindle's choreography often lacks the sumptuous sweep of the score. There's a memorable sequence, early on, when the vampish Monica Zamora - the spit of Liza Minnelli - repeatedly reclines into the arms of four admirers to be dragged along on point while puffing serenely on a cigarette. But this promise of wit never quite follows through. There is, though, lovely partnering from the saturnine Joseph Cipolla, with Leticia Muller sleekly androgynous in a man's suit, flicking her torso around his with the complicated ease of someone adjusting a feather boa.

Ravel's Piano Concerto in G has inspired at least two previous ballets, but this did not deter the American choreographer Lila York, who plucked out its limpid slow movement for her latest work Sanctum as a metaphor for "the things that nourish the soul and make us human". An extended pensive solo for Robert Parker, whose balances on the opening night were perhaps not quite as extended or secure as he'd have liked them to be, segues abruptly into Christopher Rouse's frantic Phantasmata. From the sublime to the ridiculous, the stage is suddenly overrun with sci-fi gremlins whose ministry of silly walks at manic speed signify the stresses of our machine-harried time: the dance teems with lively ideas. York could have ended beautifully with the Elysian vision of 16 golden youths, serenity restored, lounging in silhouette against an evening sky. But she blew it - for me at any rate - with a schmaltzy bit of love business at the end.

No such errors of taste hinder David Bintley's Nutcracker Sweeties, a confection inspired by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn's fantastical reworking of Tchaikovsky, and decorated by Jasper Conran's all-but-edible frocks. It's OTT all the way. The Sugar Plum Fairy comes out as Sugar Rum Cherry, a Cotton-Club diva dressed to kill; the waltz of the Floreadors is a four-in-a-bar swing to which Bintley adds a nice bit of slapstick for flamenco dancer and bull. The original Arabian dance becomes a floor show for Arabesque Cookie - Leticia Muller in tattooed thighs, fringing and not much else. Despite Muller's splendid camel impersonation and the distraction of whirling attendants, this was one time Bintley's choreographic inventiveness flagged, leaving us wondering what place belly dancing had on the Opera House stage.

But for the most part this amalgam of ballet, jazz dance and peppy exhibitionism is dealt with a sure touch. It's a long time since any new work in this house has provoked such a roar of approval or such a solid blockade of limos in the street. If David Bintley has hit on a stratagem for commissioning saleable stuff of this calibre, perhaps he'd kindly tell his friends in the South.

Twyla Tharp, queen of American eclecticism, was in town this week in an unusual bid to prime Europe, no less, on her latest project, a brand new company called Tharp! (The punctuation, along with the ego, is hers). In a three-hour "physical press conference", she expanded her methods in a hands-on session which even had writers shaking a leg, and two of her terrific new dancers giving selections from their debut show. Sweet Fields, a dynamic exploration of American spirituality set to Shaker hymns, and 66, a piece inspired by TV's Route 66, dangled the prospect of a Twyla back on top form, making dance that is polished, sexy, funny, majestic, and utterly immune to convention. So, watch out for Tharp! That's an imperative (!)

BRB's Jazz Mixed Bill: ROH, WC2 (0171 304 4000), Tues & Wed. Tharp!: Edinburgh Playhouse (0131 473 2000), 11-13 Aug.