Theme and Variations is a perfect embellishment of pure ballet

It’s a sumptuous piece, set to the final movement of Tchaikovsky’s Orchestral Suite No 3 and full of quick changes of pace, glittering patterns of steps, gracious gestures, extraordinary musicality. In peach and lemon sparkly tutus designed by Roberta Guidi di Bagno, a chorus line of dancers creates a delicate frame around a central couple.

It’s all something and nothing, a perfect embellishment of pure ballet that gains its depth from a serene central pas de deux performed with confidence and lyrical understanding by guest artist Alice Mariani, from La Scala, partnered by Ricardo Castellanos of the Norwegian National Ballet.

Martha Graham’s Errand Into the Maze was created the same year but could not be more different. Its stark modernity, encapsulated in Isamu Noguchi’s stylised black and white setting, makes it look utterly of today. So do its themes: a woman’s confrontation with her fear, a conquering of the forces that seem to threaten her. Only the mythological telling, heavy makeup and the way the Creature of Fear (Rentaro Nakaaki) dances with a stick permanently fixed across his shoulders suggest the symbolic and expressionistic tropes of the 1940s. But when danced with as much clarity as it is here, it’s gripping.

With Gian Carlo Menotti’s heavy piano score (played live by Osmand Tack) pounding through the air, Emily Suzuki’s woman makes fierce zigzags across the stage, following the line of the rope that marks her path. She skitters sideways in panicky horizontal steps, summoning up courage. When she confronts the beast, her whole body extends in big, bold lines, while Nakaaki jumps behind her, bouncing as if on a trampoline. Both are terrific, and their commitment brings the work to vivid life.

William Forsythe’s Herman Schmerman (Quintet) is also beautifully danced, with Aitor Arrieta, Rhys Antoni Yeomans, Alice Bellini, Carolyne Galvao and Swanice Luong finding the right mixture of insouciance and swagger to carry off Forsythe’s off-centre balances, his jumps out of nowhere, the little flexes of arms, hands, hips. With bright orange costumes against a blue background, it’s breathtakingly smart and optimistic, full of a sense of the possibilities of dance and indeed of life itself.

Herman Schmerman would have made a perfect close to a thoughtful programme that showed English National Ballet at their committed best. In fact, the final work is David Dawson’s mournful Four Last Songs, set to Richard Strauss, performed by the English National Ballet Philharmonic conducted by Maria Seletskaja and sung with feeling by Madeleine Pierard.

It’s danced magnificently, the company flooding the stage in their nude leotards, their movement finally arched and shaped. Yet the choreography seems to strain to match the sensations of the music. It’s lovely but feels overwhelmed, never quite finding its own path.