Royal Ballet, double bill, Covent Garden, review Sergei Polunin may have lost his work permit and his temporary news value, but the saga of his departure from the Royal Ballet continues. The opening night of Ashton's The Dream, in which he had been rehearsing the role of Oberon, was haunted by his absence. Indeed, it might be said that the early scenes of this one-act ballet - a sly, sexy distillation of A Midsummer Night's Dream set to Mendelssohn - were suffering a mild case of Poluninitis. Most of the cast looked vaguely shell-shocked. The pairs of lovers were danced with the requisite delicious silliness, but the fairies struggled with Ashton's fiendish choreography, while Steven McRae, nobly saving the day by forming a speed-dating partnership with Alina Cojocaru's Titania (he had been rehearsing with Roberta Marquez), seemed uncharacteristically overwhelmed by his spinning solos. Who knows, maybe it was the sheer technical difficulty of this part that caused Polunin to storm off. By the end, however, Cojocaru had begun to relish the gorgeous perversity of Titania, McRae had begun to respond, and The Dream showed that it will become a delight to savour. That said, the ballet does somehow retain the air of having been choreographed at a specific moment, upon the specific pairing of Anthony Dowell and Antoinette Sibley. I don't subscribe to the view that new work is, by definition, a better thing than revivals, but I am not sure how much true spark lies within this particular rekindling. Song of the Earth, on the other hand, is one of those pieces that could be revived until the day of judgment and still hold its mystery. Conceived by the other great British choreographer, Kenneth Macmillan, to Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde - sung here by Katharine Goeldner and Toby Spence - its depth and purity is unparalleled. No set, no clever costumes distract the eye. By miraculously simple means the work engages with the great themes of death and renewal, and in Carlos Acosta as the Messenger of Death and Tamara Rojo as the Woman, it has interpreters who allow those themes to permeate their every movement. What true, intelligent artists these two are, understanding as they do that ballet is not about ego, but about the freedom that comes with submission to its demands. Polunin, take note. Until March 5.