La Sylphide is the archetypal Romantic ballet: the tragedy of a young Scotsman, James, who abandons his sweetheart Effie for an elusive, exquisite sylph. Yet, basic as its story sounds, the ballet can assume a thousand different nuances from the dancers who perform it.
As the Sylph, Alina Cojocaru is in her natural territory. Her dancing is translucent, butterfly-fast, as she flutters in and out of James's mesmerised reach; her reading of the Sylph's character is pitch-perfect. Cojocaru is always an eloquent actor, emotions welling up from deep inside her body. But as the inhuman Sylph, she's all pure, thoughtless reaction: delight, sorrow and confusion flitting across the dazzled surface of her face. She manages to give us a character who is both ineffably touching and yet has no heart.
A still more interesting spin on the story comes from Steven McRae's James. At first sight, McRae is conventionally dreamy; yet once he's dancing with Cojocaru, he is as preternaturally fast and light as her. The air sparks and shimmers between them, and their story is no longer that of a romantic lover, chasing a poetic ideal, but of a man who's found his natural element. However entrancingly neat and sweet Emma Maguire makes Effie, she will always be too mortal, too earthbound for this James.
The ballet as a whole looks very fine, with its legions of kilted, leaping Scotsmen and its drift of white sylphs. Kristen McNally's Madge needs to be dialled down to find more menace from within, but she offers a persuasive, glinting energy.
If Sylphide is an excellent ensemble performance, Ballo della Regina is one of disappointingly disparate parts. Marianela Núñez is brilliant at its centre, scattering the music with witty staccato speeds, gathering it into beautiful folds of adagio. But with the exception of Yuhui Choe, most of her supporting dancers were simply playing catch-up.
