24 Preludes bill, at Covent Garden, review The Royal Ballet's new triple bill features as its centrepiece Alexei Ratmansky's first ever work for a British company. Set to Chopin's 24 Preludes, the four-couple work is a necklace of solos, duets, trios and ensembles that mirror the quicksilver mood swings of the score on an uncluttered stage. The former Bolshoi director has a genius for stretching and subverting the classical vocabulary without ever resorting to gymnastics or distortion. He also manages to tap into the idiosyncrasies of eight comparatively unknown dancers. Some of these traits are familiar - Sarah Lamb's silky classicism, Steven McRae's practised insouciance - but others are unexpected. And revelatory. Rupert Pennefather's angry duet with Zenaida Yanowsky will be good training for his next crack at Mayerling this spring. Edward Watson, ever an unconventional hero, is well cast in a troilist ménage with Alina Cojocaru and Leanne Benjamin, reminiscent of the saucy "I'll take both" moment for the Hostess in Nijinska's Les Biches. A second viewing at Saturday's matinee revealed further wit and nuance, although some sequences remain stronger than others. One can understand Ratmansky's desire to sidestep direct comparisons with the Royal's other Chopin ballets (four by Jerome Robbins) but this unevenness could be minimised if he were to swap Jean Francaix's brassy orchestration for virtuoso piano. One might quibble about the delivery, but at least Chopin's Preludes are dansante. Christopher Wheeldon's latest premiere does battle with Benjamin Britten's 1940 Sinfonia da Requiem, which resists choreographic interpretation with every fibre of its doomy being. It is danced beneath an intriguing explosion of giant woodshavings by Jean-Marc Puissant and is called Aeternum. There's a sizzling solo for James Hay, but the incessant lifting and splitting grew tiresome. And although the torment-death-resurrection parallels Britten's three movements, there remains something ersatz and unsatisfying in Wheeldon's bid to match the score's seriousness. The elegant Marianela Nuñez led the cast of 18 and showed off her gift for anguished abstraction, undaunted by an ill-fitting leotard. Mercifully, by the time Claire Calvert made her powerful debut the following day, the fairy fingers of the Opera House wardrobe department had tacked on a modest wisp of skirt. You sometimes wonder what dress rehearsals are for. To March 14. www.roh.org.uk