English National Ballet have been celebrating their 60th anniversary with a revival of Michael Corder’s Cinderella, which they brought to Oxford seven years ago. Corder has made it an adult morality tale, the triumph of gentle modesty over brash vulgarity. In this version the heroine’s sisters are not the jokey panto figures of Frederick Ashton’s creation for the Royal Ballet (roles that he used to dance to hilarious effect in tandem with Robert Helpman). Here they are beautiful, though vicious and unpleasant. This makes the prince seem less of an idiot when he goes as far as allowing them to try on the slipper.

Michael Coleman plays Cinderella’s father more like a doddering grandfather, and the question of age is also raised by the two principals. Daria Klimentova is the company’s senior ballerina, and though she dances and acts beautifully, she is not quite convincing as the innocent young girl of the title. She is paired with 22-year-old Vadim Muntagirov (pictured with her), an elegant dancer with a tremendous technique. He, in contrast, needs to mature as a personality, but certainly makes the demands of Corder’s choreographty look easy work. But, despite such reservations, the leading couple gave an affecting performance of a well thought out version of the Cinderella story, overcoming the rather down-beat stridency of Prokofiev’s score, and the gloom of the midnight-blue ballroom.

But it was Juan Rodriguez, an assured young dancer just promoted to the newly-created rank of junior soloist, who stole the show. The Dancing Master is a big role in Corder’s work, and Rodriguez brought to it a self-mocking elegance and a powerful technique, coupled with a wonderful gift for comedy — his facial expressions as he tries to shepherd the sisters through their solos are a treat.