A company's identity crisis

On one thing we can pretty well all agree: the Universal Ballet from Seoul has a highly presentable corps de ballet. Not Kirov standard, naturally, but enjoyably worth watching as the ghosts in the second act of Giselle, where they move with a smooth unity. However, anyone seeing them only as the dryads (mistranslated in the programme as "fairies") of their other London offering, Don Quixote, might wonder what the fuss is about. There, they are well drilled, but without much flow.

On one thing we can pretty well all agree: the Universal Ballet from Seoul has a highly presentable corps de ballet. Not Kirov standard, naturally, but enjoyably worth watching as the ghosts in the second act of Giselle, where they move with a smooth unity. However, anyone seeing them only as the dryads (mistranslated in the programme as "fairies") of their other London offering, Don Quixote, might wonder what the fuss is about. There, they are well drilled, but without much flow.

So is this enough to justify travelling the company round the world? It is quite something for a small Asian country to have not just one, but two classical companies - for there is a Korean National Ballet, too. But just how good is the one that has arrived here?

Sixteen years after it began (the same time it took the Royal Ballet to be ready to occupy Covent Garden), Universal Ballet has not developed a distinctive repertoire and, leaving behind the one ballet on a Korean subject that Americans saw two years ago, it introduces itself to London with two old classics. They are needed, no doubt, for home audiences, but look hackneyed to us, especially as the Giselle is (except for one Kirov solo) absolutely standard, with no special insights or stylistic revelations.

This opening production revealed a further disadvantage: a shortage of outstanding soloists. The leading woman, Julia Moon, had a pleasing lightness but, like her able partner Jae-Won Hwang, showed no great expressiveness. Wang Yi did his solos in the peasant pas de deux brilliantly, except for one slip, but he carried to extremes the soft, florid style that is disconcerting in the company as a whole.

The acting, too, seemed rather flat, and this impression was confirmed in Don Quixote, where all four of the main mimed roles (the Don, Sancho, Gamache and Lorenzo) came over as empty caricatures. The performers were not much helped by the production - "version Oleg Vinogradov, staging Natalia Spitsyna" - which lacked cogency and climaxes, so that scenes tended to begin or end with no emphasis.

Act Two suffered the most, with the feeblest presentation and choreography for the gypsies I have ever seen, followed by a vision scene lacking the lyricism that these dancers are capable of. It did not help that they were surrounded by a clutter of 12 students from English schools as cupids, and that the undistinguished, unspirited orchestra here reached its most stolid level.

Lali Kandelaki as the heroine Kitri and Hyuk-Ku Kwon as her lover Basil both excel at jumps and spins, to exhilarating effect in their solos, but did not give much sense of fun at first; luckily, they both came much more to life in the showpieces of the last two scenes. Either the production or the performers' lack of feeling for Spanish traditions robbed the big set numbers of punch.

Most of their designers, teachers and ballet staff are Russian, but I do not find a strong Russian flavour to the company or its productions. Nor do they offer a local twist, as, for instance, Matsuyama Ballet of Tokyo did with Japanese designs for the otherwise straightforward Giselle that it brought to London a little while back.

I understand Universal's wish to succeed in the classics, but I do wish they could make them more their own. And if they want to be accepted as an international company, then developing their own national repertoire first would give them more individuality.

To Sat (020-7863 8000)