David Nixon of Northern Ballet Theatre has made a speciality of telling a dramatic story in sequences of dance that make both the events, and the feelings of the characters, clear. Wuthering Heights, one of hisearliest, is also one of his strongest, most dramatic achievements.

Emily Bronte’s bleak story of passionate, frustrated love on the Yorkshire moors, hovers on the verge of melodrama, but Nixon never allows it to go over the top. His choreography is at its best and most moving in the agonised solos he has made for Heathcliff, and in the passionate duets for Heathcliff and Cathy – especially their final encounter on the moors during yet another storm. It’s least convincing in the ensemble dances at the Lintons’ Thrushcross Grange, where David Brohn’s heavyweight orchestration of Claude-Michel Schonberg’s score becomes a caricature of a formal dance.

Nixon has used the device of having a young version and an adult version of the two lovers. Ben Mitchell is young Heathcliff and Ayana Kanda young Cathy.

We meet them at once, as the tormented Heathcliff remembers happier days on the moors. The youngsters are maybe 12 years old (hard to tell with adult dancers, however small and young), but certainly still innocent. Their dances are as much a romp as a coming together of future lovers, but there is a moment when playfulness is suspended, and they seem to understand what the future holds for them. Kanda, in particular, is believable as a girl who will become the passionate Cathy. Mitchell is a bit too cute for the Heathcliff-to-be, but plays his role with great conviction.

Keiko Amemori, one on the company’s best and most popular dancers, is Cathy, and she too is required to play against type. Small, pretty, dainty, it’s hard for her to conjure up the earthy, sexy Cathy, ravaged by an overpowering love for a man she cannot have. Having said that, she dances with great passion, and – as always – with great intensity, and gradually makes her version of the character believable.

But it’s Kenneth Tindall, as Heathcliff, who dominates this production. Tindall shows us an essentially decent man completely overpowered by the love that has grown since childhood. A man deeply embittered by a social system that makes him inferior to snotty Edgar (well played and danced, by Ashley Dixon). It’s life, not his nature, that has turned him into the cruel tormentor of the unfortunate Isabella – another good performance by Pippa Moore.

This is a fine piece of work by David Nixon, powerful and moving. It’s on until Saturday (tel: 0870 060 6652).