Dance: Skulduggery needs more sex

After a stage play and several movies, Laclos's novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses keeps turning up in dance. Northern Ballet Theatre did a version last year; English National Ballet had to shelve plans for another. The story has a known name, period costumes and plenty of sex. Less helpfully, its aristocratic intrigues involve complicated plotting. Adam Cooper's new production is fluent if unsubtle, with gorgeous designs and some charismatic performances.

Cooper is an ex-Royal Ballet star, most famous for his male Swan in Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake. In this show, he choreographs and plays the lead. Valmont is an 18th-century rake who agrees join the Marquise de Merteuil's latest plot. She wants revenge on an ex- lover, so she asks Valmont to seduce his young fiance, Ccile. Valmont is also set on seducing the chaste Madame de Tourvel.

NBT got around all this with a spoken narrative, which was cheating. Cooper introduces characters carefully and sets them prowling around each other. It's deftly done, though there isn't much actual dancing. Cooper's choreography owes something to Bourne and something to the Royal Ballet's Kenneth MacMillan, with two big acrobatic pas de deux. It owes even more to the stage presence of these performers, and to Lez Brotherston's wonderful designs.

The set is a grand salon with a silvered ceiling " a tarnished looking- glass world, beautifully lit by Paule Constable. Walls become mirrors or windows for lurking onlookers. When the story turns to Tourvel, Brotherston opens the windows on a misty landscape and a flood of delicate light.

He and Cooper add too many clever touches " a duet on a moving harpsichord, or Cooper clambering around Ccile's bed in the rape scene.

Cooper's Valmont is easily charming and easily nasty. He stalks about the stage in dressing gowns or leather boots, and he's good at making dramatic reactions register. His dancing is athletic without harshness. Valmont shows off things we know Cooper can do. It hasn't the depth of his Swan or his MacMillan roles, but it's effective.

Sarah Wildor, Cooper's wife and another ex-Royal dancer, is a touching Madame de Tourvel. The carriage of her head is beautifully expressive: she lifts it modestly, but her long neck gives her assurance.

In Cooper's version, there isn't enough sex. We see Sarah Barron's Madame de Merteuil as a manipulator, but it's not until after the interval that she registers as a sexual predator. Without that, it's hard to see what she gets from her games. She should be as important as Valmont, but has less impact than Wildor or Helen Dixon, a brilliant Ccile. Roles for supporting men are underdeveloped.

Philip Feeney's score is stronger on atmosphere than melody. The singer Marilyn Cutts (formerly of Fascinating Aida) gives an assured performance as Valmont's aunt.

Why do ballets fade? The Kirov's London season ends with La Bayadre, and it looks flat. Companies have off nights, but these dancers are dancing Bayadre blankly. Perhaps it's boredom. The Kirov tour constantly and rely heavily on the big ballets. It's no excuse for performances by rote.

La Bayadre is Kirov property. This is the Soviet version of Petipa's ballet; at the last London season, they danced a new reconstruction of the 1900 production. There's more dancing in the Soviet Bayadre, and it uses a more thumping orchestration of the Minkus score.

The point of La Bayadre is the third act. The heroine, Nikiya, killed by a snakebite, reappears to her lover in a vision. This scene, the Kingdom of the Shades, is the greatest test for a corps de ballet. They enter one by one, descending a ramp, repeating one simple phrase. It should be hypnotic.

The Kirov corps break up their phrasing. Arms stretch blankly rather than reaching forwards; they don't share the impulse of those lifting legs. There's a loss of belief throughout. This was La Bayadre as costume parade.

'Liaisons' to 14 August (0870 737 7737)

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