Alina cojocaru

Good, better, best was the satisfying trajectory of Northern Ballet’s terrific programme of three original short works, which moves south to the Linbury Studio at the Royal Opera House at the beginning of November. The company has a new director in the amiable Federico Bonelli, formerly a principal with the Royal Ballet, and he has several problems to address, not least the shortage of richly characterful dancers among the senior ranks. But this triple bill should boost everyone’s morale, and the audience at the Leeds Playhouse was enthralled. First up was Wailers, Mthuthuzeli November’s elegiac return to the world of his childhood in a parched South African township. Bourréeing on

I was never Rudolf Nureyev’s greatest fan. I must have seen him dance 30 or 40 times, starting with a Bayadère in the mid-1960s, and while his sheer presence remained so potent that he was always exciting to witness, I became increasingly aware of how fiercely willed his dancing was – a struggle with or against his own body, almost self-punishing (he believed that he performed at his best when he was totally exhausted). His final appearances, when he was showing symptoms of the Aids that killed him in 1993, were truly painful to watch on that score. He really had nothing left to give, but the compulsion remained. Closer