Dance: Birmingham Royal Ballet Hippodrome, Birmingham

Since David Bintley became its director 18 months ago, Birmingham Royal Ballet has been establishing itself as Britain's most creative ballet company, but for the winter / spring season it seems intent on proving itself the best. With a new programme of masterworks by two major choreographers joining a superior production of The Sleeping Beauty, there is little competition.

The double-bill premiered on Tuesday is BRB's contribution to the Sixties stage of Birmingham's "Towards the Millennium" festival, and a timely reminder of the heights that dance reached during that period. Frederick Ashton's The Dream, made in 1964 for Shakespeare's 400th birthday, then looked a bit old-fashioned but soon demonstrated that timeless would be a better description for its witty, pretty reworking of romantic ideas.

One of the most popular works in the repertoire of both Royal Ballet companies, this revival of The Dream is welcome not only for good dancing all round but also for the refreshingly well-considered playing of the quartet of human lovers by Samira Saidi, Chenca Williams, Yuri Zhukov and Joseph Cipolla - all real, living, breathing people, all undergoing repeated and credible transformations through the course of the ballet.

Kenneth MacMillan's Song of the Earth, created for Stuttgart in 1965 and surely his best work, makes a serious and moving contrast to Ashton's spirited comedy. This company has never before tackled its long, demanding reflections on life, love and death, but Bintley's new team takes to it beautifully. Barry Wordsworth's fine direction of Mahler's great score helps tremendously.

Co-ordination in the dancers' ensembles was not always impeccable on the first night (partly, I guess, because injuries enforced cast changes during late rehearsals), but the spirit of the ballet was splendidly there. That was true above all of Leticia Muller's reflective, powerfully expressive and subtly inflected performance in the lonely, weary but steadfast lead woman's role.

Joseph Cipolla brings a fine dramatic presence and smooth stamina to the central man's role. Young Robert Parker's highly promising performance as the Messenger of Death will be even better with time to settle in; already he has style, strength and the right manner, even if occasionally over-stretched by some of the partnering. Rachel Peppin's bright, happy solo is outstanding among the balance of an impressive cast.

The impressiveness comes not only from individual performers but from the way this diverse group of dancers, drawn from all over the world, have settled in to present a great example of ensemble playing in everything they do. The combination of the two long (each about an hour) works could have been made at any time in the past 30 years, but Bintley seems to have been the first to think of it and the result is overwhelming.

These two works give a better impression of the real gifts of Ashton and MacMillan than anything I have seen at Covent Garden this season. They share the Birmingham season and subsequent tour with The Sleeping Beauty, in which Peter Wright's ceremonious production and Philip Prowse's sumptuous design likewise show up the London company's miserable staging of the same work. The two performances I saw last week revealed fine dancing on all sides, with Sabrina Lenzi's ravishingly expressive Aurora and Chi Cao's brilliant Bluebird demanding special mention.

`The Dream' and `Song of the Earth' at the Birmingham Hippodrome tonight, then touring (0121-622 7486)

John Percival