The Stanislavsky ballet, Royal Festival Hall, London

The frozen kiss of fairy-tale enchantment

The Stanislavsky Ballet, Moscow's smaller, more populist alternative to the Bolshoi, makes its British debut and in so doing brings The Snow Maiden back to the same Royal Festival Hall stage on which it was premiered 40 years ago. The Russian folk tale may have grown unfamiliar, but in fact Vladimir Bourmeister, then the head of the Stanislavsky company, created the piece for London Festival Ballet, becoming the first Soviet choreographer allowed to work with a Western company. The producer and director, Peter Wright, played Father Frost. Some critics said the ballet was old-fashioned, although audiences liked it.

The Stanislavsky's production, mounted by Bourmeister two years later, looks likely to go the same route. Revised by the company's current director Dmitri Briantsev, it opens in the dense blue-whiteness of the Land of Frost, where Snowflakes dance in conventional corps de ballet lines and flutter their fingers in everybody's idea of hackneyed tutu prettiness. A quarrelsome peasant couple provide a deal of tiresomely stagey comedy and Lel (Vladimir Dimitriev), one of the Snow Maiden's suitors, sports a bright yellow wig and thick eyeshadow, presumably considered suitable for a fairy-tale character, but unfortunately underlining the fairy element.

Meanwhile there is too much humdrum, lengthy choreography, so that sometimes the simple, allegorical story seems in danger of sagging.

Yet there is much to compensate for these failings. The story may be simple, but it is utterly charming – a sort of icy version of Ashton's Ondine, where the Snow Maiden falls in love with a mortal, Mizgir, and in so doing destroys his relationship with Kupava.

The two women as played by Natalia Ledovskaya (the Snow Maiden) and Tatiana Tchernobrovkina (Kupava) have charismatic dramatic sincerity: Tchernobrovkina is heart-rending in the solo in which she pleads with Mizgir and ends collapsed in public grief. Ledovskaya enchantingly evokes the Snow Maiden's touching, guileless infatuation and amoral ingenuousness, innocent of the terrible harm she is doing. The choreographic motif for the Snow Maiden – standing and bourrée-ing on point – is an eloquent metaphor for her peculiar mix of strangeness and vulnerability.

The action has powerful moments, too. The villagers fall in frightened unison shock when the Snow Maiden makes her first appearance and stands timidly, a fragile, uninvited alien, on her weird tiptoe. Soon, however, her glacial exoticism finds male admirers, but when they embrace her they are overcome by shivers and frost-bite. She finishes melted by the first rays of the spring sun, leaving only a puddle and her crown of winter flowers.

The Stanislavsky Orchestra, conducted by Georgy Zhemchizhin, gives strong dramatic shape to the score – a compilation of Tchaikovsky pieces, including his incidental music for Ostrovsky's play The Snow Maiden. Would that the laborious scene changes were free of moving-curtain-rail noises, although presumably the suspenseful first-night hitches will be ironed out. The designs, specially tailored for the RFH's limited facilities, are ravishing. Dmitry Zababurin's Mizgir is handsome, if technically overstretched. But otherwise, I was impressed by the general standard of dancing, and the whole-hearted involvement in even the smallest roles.

To 2 January 2002, 020-7960 4242