Swan Lake, Royal Opera House, London

An outstanding combination

The theory behind the ballerina's double role in Swan Lake is that she plays both the Swan Queen, Odette, and her lookalike sneaky rival, Odile, and that Prince Siegfried is thus fooled into betraying their love. The problem is that, inevitably, few dancers are equally convincing in both aspects. Two performances by the Royal Ballet on Wednesday illustrated this by showing very contrasting outcomes.

Tamara Rojo gets it as nearly right as you will see nowadays. Her secret is that she plays both roles with a lot of subtle inflexion. All the time in her dancing there are nuances of pace, emphasis, angle. She makes both Odette and Odile complex characters, so the overlap between them is more credible. She is not afraid of the old-fashioned mimed acting – in fact, she achieves a real conversation from it – but even more important is the way she makes the dances themselves tell the story and show the character.

Put her opposite Carlos Acosta as Siegfried, another performer who makes the most of all the dances but wants them to be part of a meaningful context, and you have an outstanding combination. Acosta manages to make you forget how poorly this role is developed in Anthony Dowell's production. And he with his smooth, swift pirouettes, Rojo with her razor-sharp fouettés, found a splendid climax to their act three pas de deux.

A newcomer to the company, Giuseppe Picone, appearing unexpectedly as a guest artist because several regular members are on the sick list, had more problems with the part of Siegfried at the matinée. Hailing from Naples via Nancy, English National Ballet and American Ballet Theatre, he is an able and experienced dancer, but left the role looking very conventional, heavy on handsome but pointless poses.

His Odette/Odile was Zenaida Yanowsky, a comparative newcomer to the roles. She actually dances both of them rather well, with an impressive amplitude of movement for Odette and crisp bravura for Odile. But she makes the first so impassive, while grinning, vamping and flirting her way through the second, that it beats me how any Siegfried with eyes in his head could possibly be taken in and confuse one with the other.

Since Yolanda Sonnabend's designs often come in for stick, let me say how well the skirts move for the swan choruses. But the costumes for the villain Rothbart are sheer disaster.

A special pleasure at both performances was the playing of the Tchaikovsky music (clear, colourful and meaningful) by Birmingham's Royal Ballet Sinfonia under Andrea Quinn's conducting. We are going to miss her now that she has left the Royal Ballet to become music director of New York City Ballet.

The Royal Ballet perform a mixed programme to Sat (020-7304 4000)