Triumphant re-telling of musical tale

DAVID Bintley created his dance drama to Delibes' ravishing music in 1993, but like other choreographers who tackled the tale, his version came to be regarded as a commendable near miss.

He has revisited it and devised a substantial introduction to the main story with additional music from Delibes' La Source.

The central narrative – an anorexically thin tale about gods, a nymph and a shepherd, verges on the risible – but Bintley's framing device now anchors the mythical characters in contemporary reality, a vast improvement on the earlier version.

Bintley's clever amalgam of classicism, sentiment, wit and slapstick provides the dancers with a cornucopia of styles – passionate, tender, comic, dramatic or simply plain lovely to look at. But it requires the performers to be consummate actors as well as dancers.

Once again Bintley and his company triumph.