In Water, Corder sets clipped, speedy steps for Johan Kobborg and Alina Cojocaru, with Laura Morera outstanding in a solo filled with changes of direction.Christopher Wheeldon’s Fire is the most spectacular section. With its polite steps and bows to the royal crest, this is a very retro work.It is well danced. The Royal Ballet has been on wobbly form lately, with some alarmingly weak dancing in the recent Sleeping Beauty. Peter Farmer frames the dancing with elaborate, heavy designs, crowns and draperies Tunics and tutus are thickly patterned. Only the Air section survived, so the gaps have been filled with new dances, commissioned from three British choreographers. In its new form, it is a candyfloss ballet, a large (40 minutes) but insubstantial dose of sugar.The new dances by David Bintley, Michael Corder and Christopher Wheeldon are all formal, classical numbers.

Steps are pretty or spectacular, but they don’t add up to anything more. The performance tended to be hectic, too, though Marianela Nu?danced with marvellous abandon.Homage to the Queen is a recycled celebration. Ashton’s original version, a setpiece with four ballerinas representing the elements, was made to celebrate the Coronation. Dancers from Birmingham Royal Ballet chose duets from Frederick Ashton’s The Two Pigeons and John Cranko’s The Lady and the Fool – which both build on earlier scenes. Sylvie Guillem, characteristically, brought her own number, Russell Maliphant’s contemporary-dance solo Two. Guillem stands spotlit in a box of light, her whirling limbs caught in the angles of Michael Hulls’s lighting.La Valse, Frederick Ashton’s choreography to Ravel’s score, is a hectic, swooping opening. The entire Covent Garden audience gasped, a collective sizzle of astonishment.
Le Corsaire is standard gala fare, an obvious showstopper Other pieces work less well out of context.

Carlos Acosta comes bounding on, his jumps high, the landings as soft as velvet. As he hangs in the air, Acosta embellishes one whirling leap with more turns, more kicks, more sparkle. This gala, which also celebrates the Queen’s 80th birthday, follows a new Sleeping Beauty and a special programme of works made for the company. The gala is made up of party pieces, ending with the reworking of an older pi? d’occasion All in all, it’s an odd selection

The hit of the evening was the duet from Le Corsaire. “No,” he responds with a shaft of vintage Stoppard wit, “I think it might be more useful to devise a play about a cure for the common cold.”‘Rock’n'Roll’, Royal Court, London SW1 (020-7565 5000) 14 June to 15 July; transfers to the Duke of York’s Theatre, London WC2 (0870 060 6623) on 22 July.

The Royal Ballet has settled down to a thorough celebration of its 75th birthday. In The Invention of Love, the two Housmans discuss a poem by the Roman elegist Gallus, of which only one line survives. Nine more lines turned up while we were doing it.” And now, while rehearsing Rock’n'Roll, a researcher in Cologne has found a fragment that matches up with an extant piece of a Sappho poem. Who says that art can’t have a short-term effect? I suggest that Stoppard, the Oscar-winning co-author of Shakespeare in Love, should next try to extend the Bard’s canon by writing a show involving the lost collaborative play Cardenio. Even a scrap of that would be a momentous turn-up for the books.