Following the Royal Ballet's rustication to Hammersmith, London's dance elite was pining for a bit of glamour. Luckily, says Louise Levene, Sunday's Royal "Stars of the Night" Gala made sure that they got it.

Les Ballets Trockaderos

Tickets to hear Luciano Pavarotti singing Verdi's Requiem with the Philharmonia in the Royal Festival Hall in December sold out in two hours.

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo

It's hi-tech, state of the art and scary. Rising out of the foyer, winking and scheming like Hal, the subversive computer in 2001, comes the new all-seeing, all-knowing theatre box office. With potential to arrange and maybe change your life.

I Have often found something a little eerie in the Kirov's corps de ballet, with its dozens upon dozens of identikit girls whose admiral lengths of neck, slope of shoulder and torso-to-leg proportions suggest some secret pre-Gorbachev programme of genetic engineering. But in both the ballets the company showed last week - a refreshingly straightforward production of Swan Lake and sublime Giselle - one ceased to wonder at the uniformity, and marvelled instead at the diamond security of technique that enables some 40-odd slips-of-things to dance as one. As swans they present a mirrored wall of perfectly angled limbs. As the spectral Wilis - the ghosts of jilted maidens who force their deceivers to dance themselves to death - they produce the deliciously extended frisson that first ensured that Giselle, uniquely among romantic ballets, would remain in the company's repertoire for 150 years.

Sir: As he is Chairman of the Governors of the Royal Ballet School, it was predictable that Lord Sterling's letter (17 July) would defend the school's staff and pupils, but he was also profoundly smug about the standards they achieve in world-class ballet terms. He claims that former pupils are "now some of the brightest stars in the international ballet world", but only Darcey Bussell truly falls into this category.

I will confess to having looked forward excitedly to Monday night's farewell gala at the Opera House. I saw my very first ballet in that same stuffy auditorium (Fonteyn and Nureyev in Swan Lake, since you ask) and the thrill has never really worn off. The programme had been kept a secret and there were breathless mutterings about the various surprises in store. In the event, the secrecy seemed more a factor of managerial uncertainty than any particular sense of theatre. We all knew Sylvie Guillem would be dancing (it said so in the Radio Times), they were hardly likely to give Darcey Bussell, Irek Mukhamedov and Tetsuya Kumakawa a night off and the Kirov had already let the cat out of the bag that Igor Zelensky would be dancing. The only surprise was that there were no surprises.

The Royal Ballet last night gave its final performance at Covent Garden, central London, before the two-year closure for its controversial pounds 213m redevelopment.

'Too safe' Royal's dancers are finding more adventurous work, writes Elizabeth Redick

Balanchine detector vans patrol the globe making quite sure that any ballet company planning to perform one of the master's works has a valid licence to do so. Anthony Dowell had allowed the Royal Ballet's rights to Apollo to lapse last year but planned to revive the work this spring regardless. Oh no you don't, said the Balanchine Trust. Not only does it safeguard the steps, costumes and staging of the productions in its care, it also exercises strict quality-control over casting. Although more than happy with Darcey Bussell and Jonathan Cope - not to mention NYCB's Igor Zelensky, who was scheduled to guest in the ballet - the Americans were uncertain about Irek Mukhamedov. Maybe if he slimmed down? Could they give him the once-over at the final dress-rehearsal? This wasn't acceptable to Anthony Dowell, so the Trust withdrew the Royal Ballet's rights to perform the work at all and an 11th-hour substitute had to be found. Perhaps wishing to compensate Mukhamedov for the humiliating loss of Apollo, they settled on The Judas Tree, Kenneth MacMillan's dirty story of gang rape and betrayal. Whatever the technical merits of this nasty piece of work, it's a bloody strange ballet to substitute for the neo- classical masterpiece the audience had booked to see. Last Wednesday's crowd certainly seemed unhappy with the switch.

The arts took centre stage, literally, in the election campaign yesterday. Sir Richard Eyre allowed the National Theatre's Lyttelton auditorium to host the main arts debate of the campaign. The only pity was that the cast was one of understudies.

The mouthwatering prospect of Darcey Bussell and Igor Zelensky starring in Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet attracted a capacity crowd at the Royal Opera House on Tuesday. The couple's bravura dancing in Bayadere earlier this month was a big hit with the crowd and Zelensky's huge jump and manly bearing are a rare sight on a stage too often starved of excitement.

DANCE