Danses Concertantes, Sadler's Wells, London

Chamber made

Lucky Benjamin Millepied. This French-born leading dancer with New York City Ballet, whose nimbleness we admired in previous seasons, had the opportunity to show off a different skill as a choreographer with a premiere at Sadler's Wells, and very well he took it. The occasion was a week of chamber ballets danced by 10 of his New York colleagues: a highly rewarding show. How could it not be, given their provenance?

Millepied's contribution is a Triple Duet to three movements from a Bach partita, handsomely played by the choreographer's flautist brother Sylvain, danced with skill and charm by Alexandra Ansanelli and Craig Hall. Very hoppy-skippy at first, then more languorous, it ends by challenging their virtuosity: an attractive novelty, lively enough not to be subdued by its high-powered neighbours. And that in spite of being sandwiched between works by City Ballet's founding geniuses, George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins.

Actually, Robbins's In the Night, a suite of dances to Chopin nocturnes, needs a more coherent performance than it received on opening night. Its three main duets should each convey a strong feeling through their distinct content, and only with the third of them, given by Wendy Whelan and Jock Soto, did the physical, musical and emotional qualities of the dances really come together. That also detracted from the finale, with its opportunity to bring their relationships together. A bit of imagination from the audience was needed to see all the contrasted moods in their full potential.

No such problem, however, with Duo Concertant, in which Balanchine shows us exactly what makes his duets so masterly. He puts the two players of Stravinsky's music on stage (Cameron Grant, piano, and Eric Crambes, violin) and lets us watch the two dancers listening intently and responding to what they hear. A terrific piece, in which the score evokes a wonderful variety of movement, from dedication through friendliness to formal romanticism, and in this Yvonne Borrée and Peter Boal showed their real qualities.

Last but by no means least, the London premiere of Polyphonia by NYCB's gifted young resident choreographer, the English-born Christopher Wheeldon. The music for this is 10 piano pieces by Gyorgy Ligeti: extremely complex scores, yet Wheeldon matches them with lucid, beautifully controlled dancing, even when he has eight dancers on stage at once all doing different and often startling things.

Solos of fluent variety, duets sometimes amazingly involved but elsewhere seeming smoothly inevitable, unexpected groupings of women or men – all these are present, and often strong touches of humour too. Wheeldon's cast does him proud. Polyphonia must be the best ballet by an English choreographer since Ashton died; too bad that we can't see it more often.