The Bright Stream

There was one exception to the unremarkable run of Mariinsky performances we saw in Petersburg - Alexei Ratmansky's Cinderella: crisp, witty, contemporary - and psychologically strong. This was someone with a real sense of dance language from the phatic to the 'still sad music of humanity'. A communicator - and a consummate story-teller. On the train to Petersburg from Kouvola I read Joan Acocella's recent piece on NYCB's Diamond season. Of Ratmansky she wrote: " It looked as though an eagle had landed in the barnyard" (this in contrast to Wheeldon et al)

The Bright Stream, in the Bolshoi's season at the ROH confirmed earlier impressions of Ratmansky; that he is a stylish dance linguist, that his choreography is emotionally apt to each of his characters; that he is musical, witty - and with a real sense of hinterland. Stream is racy of the soil. Ratmansky tells a story deliciously. His ballet is steeped in its artistic origins, and in a sense of nation, heritage, and social history. This is something I really miss in today's choreographers; that they have lived only in a ballet-metro bubble - and that their choreography radiates little of life beyond stage and classroom.

Narrative is the real test of a choreographer (rather as dexterous wordplay humour is of natural intelligence). And to tell stories, you must know the world whereof you tell them. I thought of Clement Crisp's ludicrously overblown line "We have a choreographer", in his review of Alastair Marriott's Tanglewood. He might have saved the line for Ratmansky.