Now and again it picks out a detail of the verses with startling directness. When the tenor sings of a pavilion reflected in a pool, the dancers up-end themselves like reflections in water. A reference to death as an ape howling in the night prompts an alarming, ugly loping from Carlos Acosta's Death figure. Every movement tells a story, yet there is no narrative nor mime.Tamara Rojo was the first-cast choice for Death's prime target, and she delivered the role's oblique and testing choreography with an increasingly desperate fervour almost unbearable by the end. Yet this is an ensemble piece for 18 dancers, not a star vehicle. And it shows the company pulling together with terrific force and commitment surely the best send-off Anthony Dowell could want.Yet it wasn't the last goodbye. There was a gala to get through: A Knight at the Ballet, surveying Dowell's 30-year dancing career in a one-off sweep This wasn't an evening done for Dowell so much as by him.
He not only appeared throughout as comp?, but had clearly devised the whole show. From the opening photo-montage, to the elegant seamlessness of the presentation, Dowell's perfect taste was evident. The aim was to raise money partly for the Royal Ballet Upper School, whose new home is being built opposite the ROH stage door. With best seats at £1,000 apiece it raised £700,000 in one night, and could have filled the house three times over to judge by demand for returns.The line-up of guest artists wasn't quite as starry as originally mooted, but that still left a generous helping of flown-in talent, not all of it employed at full stretch. I confess I only recognised Roberto Bolle by his bottom, the rest of him mostly obscured as he fork-lifted Leanne Benjamin in the Tha?pas de deux. Though it was a rare treat to see Adam Cooper duetting with real-life wife Sarah Wildor, Ashton's very odd Varii Capricci (with Cooper playing a spiv) didn't allow any real display of passion.
The most touching element of the evening went unremarked in the souvenir programme. That was the guest appearance by Tetsua Kumakawa, the cocky but brilliant Japanese renegade who had led the walkout of six male stars in Dowell's darkest hour. How big-hearted of the man to invite him back.Royal Ballet double bill: ROH, WC2 (020 7304 4000) today. Bridget Jones's Diary spawned a dozen imitations and Nick Hornby's tales of new manhood a handful more. Bridget Jones's Diary spawned a dozen imitations and Nick Hornby's tales of new manhood a handful more. But fans of the historical romantic bestseller Captain Corelli's Mandolin have so far lacked an obvious successor. This summer Flamingo publishers believes it has the next literary feelgood sensation Prince of the Clouds by Gianni Riotta, a 47-year-old editor of Italy's La Stampa newspaper, previously unknown in the UK.The story is being billed as "an intelligent romance ... reminiscent of the film Il Postino and Louis de Berni?s' Captain Corelli's Mandolinby the trade publication Publishers' Weekly.
