Coliseum, London
It's hard to believe that Robert Parker is due to retire at the end of this season. The crinkled grin that has so effortlessly disarmed audiences through a career of romantic roles looks as boyish as ever.
But Parker's experience counts as much as his smile, as he opens this short London run of Two Pigeons. The two live birds that flutter through Ashton's 1961 ballet can spring any number of unscripted surprises on the dancers. Yet Parker handles the pigeons with exactly the same assurance with which he walks this ballet's tricky line between sentiment and sentimentality. As the Young Man, who abandons his girlfriend for the swaggering eroticism of a Gypsy dancer, Parker knits together an endearing mix of comedy and sweetness: he's an idiot, but a romantic one.
Nao Sakuma, however, fails to find comparable balance and ease as the Young Woman. When her character is acting out, being restless, silly and flirtatious, Sakuma is just too irksomely cute; it's only when the giggles and pouts yield to pure dancing that she delivers the expression and intelligence we expect from her. Her first-act temper tantrum is all spiky, wounded rhythms and broken lines; in the shy, hopeful, passion of the reconciliation duet, her dancing is transparent and tender.
However, overacting can be a problem with many BRB dancers, who sometimes appear too anxious to be noticed and liked. Ashton's choreography for Daphnis and Chloe (1951) is as strange, dreamy and sinister as its accompanying Ravel score: there's a shimmer and drowse in the movement that's very pagan, very Greek. Yet, with the exception of Ambra Vallo (dangerously seductive as Lykanion), too much action is focused on the face, not the body. To catch the ballet's true spirit, it is best to revel in Ravel's music and in the Mediterranean colours, and the lush, craggy poetry of John Craxton's designs.