Dance: Birmingham Royal Ballet, Sadler's Wells, London</br>Stephen Petronio Comany, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London

The gripping climax of Ballet Changed My Life: Ballet Hoo - the Channel 4 series that tracked a bunch of damaged teenagers as they were put through the mill of Birmingham Royal Ballet - was usefully timed for their London season. These Sadler's Wells visits are so rare these days that BRB hasn't much of a fan base in the capital - just its reputation as the un-posh cousin of that other Royal Ballet. But clearly the royal warrant of the small screen counts for rather more. Tuesday's packed house was humming with what appeared to be first-timers.

The run opened with a trio of works set to Stravinsky. Between 1910 and 1928, the Russian wrote scores for six ballets, most of which survive in something close to their original form. The exception is Pulcinella, whose choreography is long lost, and BRB is just the latest of many to have a go at plugging the gap. Kim Brandstrup has supplied new steps, and since there was never much of a story, also some narrative shape. His Pulcinella is a louche layabout who makes women want to sleep with him and men want to beat him up, but he longs for nothing more than to be left alone for a bit of shut-eye.

If even Pulcinella's lover can't rouse him for much longer than the duration of a pas de deux, what hope for an audience of staying awake? It's permanent night-time too, with everyone in masks - always a danger in ballet, where faces offer crucial clues to what's going on. But Brandstrup has always been a great choreographer of fabrics - luscious, shot-silk scoops of the stuff - and he makes Kandis Cook's costumes really dance. Cloaks swirl, feathered hats duck and dive, and Pulcinella (the fabulously energetic Robert Parker) is such a flurry of gorgeous tatters that it's hard to tell where one pirouette stops and another begins.

If Stravinsky's score had been briefer this could have been enough. But despite beautifully crafted duets for Parker with Ambra Vallo, and knockabout with Alexander Campbell, the plot feels overstretched, playing for time while the concert - cleanly shaped by the Royal Ballet Sinfonia under Barry Wordsworth - plays itself out.

There is famously no such slack in Balanchine's Apollo. Music and movement are so stripped-to-the-bone that they demand be delivered with a kind of stern grandeur. While Chi Cao's young god was utterly persuasive - he has the face as well as the body for it - his three female muses were frankly suburban, each handling her iconic prop as casually as if were a handbag. The birth of music and oratory in the world has to mean more than that.

Chi Cao again held things together in the more successful Firebird, another recent addition to Birmingham's rep. I've not seen Enchanted Princesses quite so bright and pure, or witnessed that scene without at least one wretched girl dropping her apple. BRB did it faultlessly, and the final tableau reverberated from being so perfectly still.

Meanwhile, the South Bank had the chief Dance Umbrella item of the week. New York's Stephen Petronio has the air of an old favourite, thanks his punk-era partnership with Michael Clark. In fact this was only his second Umbrella visit, revealing a mature artist with surprisingly lush tastes. For nostalgia's sake, he kicked off with an oldie, whose bondage costumes and Stranglers blast signal the tail-end of his bad-boy phase, though with hindsight you notice how classical the steps are, and how elegantly modulated the phrases, even while the dancers stiffen into a kind of manacled limp.

Petronio's current taste is for the music of Rufus Wainwright, the singer-songwriter with the sound of a fallen angel. Petronio made Bud Suite while he was waiting to clinch a deal with Wainwright, glowingly sensuous duets and trios made to a selection of the hit ballads. But Bloom was what he was after: a rhapsodic affirmation of faith in the world, set to part-Latin liturgy, part verse by Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, and danced by his company of eight in what looks like a permanent state of bliss. If Bloom had a colour, it would be blush pink with gilded edges. The involvement of a choir of London teenagers, singing along with Wainwright's recorded score, left me almost in a puddle on the floor.

j.gilbert@independent.co.uk

* 'Stravinsky: A Celebration', Theatre Royal, Plymouth (01752 267222) Tue to Sat