What? No flopsy bunnies? Frederick Ashton’s "Beatrix Potter" may have reduced audiences to cheering when a duck lays an egg, but the Royal Ballet’s latest revival of the 1987 production of his Cinderella is proof that you don’t need small furry animals to fill Covent Garden. Ashton’s carefully arranged marriage between classical ballet and pantomime was the first British three act ballet and it sprang fully formed from the choreographer’s imagination after a lifetime absorbing Petipa’s classical tradition. Created in only six weeks in 1948, it has provided a brilliant setting for generations of young ballerinas.

...The Bolshoi guest Nina Ananiashvili danced the role of unfortunate half - sister with a demure sadness and unforced technique. She gave a very affecting suggestion of a diamond in the rough in the first act. By the third she was whizzing through an impeccable sequence of chaine turns, her controlled speed hinting at her background as a child skating prodigy. Crucially, this brilliance is always tempered by the softness encoded in Ashton’s choreography.