This production has a real fairy-tale quality, with sumptuous and very imaginative costumes by Christina Fyodorova. It’s like looking at a selection of crystallised fruits, their pastel shades sparkling gently with a coating of sugar — a delight in a ‘Watteau does camp’ sort of way.

The company showed in Swan Lake earlier in the week that they are on top form, with considerable strength in depth — and that is certainly needed for Sleeping Beauty.

In the lead was the very young-looking Ekaterina Bulgutova, completely convincing as the 16-year-old Aurora. Her photo does not appear in the programme, and I surmise she has recently been promoted from the lower ranks.

The pulsing music before her entrance suggests the racing heartbeat of a girl about to attend her first grown up party, and a royal one at that, with four handsome suitors who have travelled far to meet her.

But although her dancing is fine for the most part, her acting is a bit of a let-down. Here are these posh boys, done up to the nines — or tens, even elevens in this case — and she dances with them without any eye contact or apparent interest.

Like many highly trained Russians these days, she is unable to do the all-important balances demanded in the Rose Adagio.

I may sound fussy here, but Sleeping Beauty is the great showcase for a classical company, and the Rose Adagio is its most notable showpiece.

If the wondrous Wu Zhengdan, of the Guangdong company, can stand ‘in attitude’ on pointe on her partner’s head for a full minute, and rotate without a wobble, surely a classical ballerina should be able to stand on pointe on the ground for the second or two it takes to get both arms above her head.

All in all, though, this was a nice performance, with the last act pas de deux creditably done. Here we saw, too, that her Prince — the likeably laddish Dmitry Sobolevskiy — has a terrific jump, and can really do the business.

The four fairies who attend the christening, each given a very difficult solo, were uniformly excellent, while Anastasia Koreshnikova’s crouching Carabosse hissed and spat and stamped out her fury, just as a fairy-tale villain should. n The Russian State Ballet of Siberia is performing at the Wycombe Swan from January 31 to February 2 (01494 512000, www.wycombeswan.co.uk); the Wyvern Theatre, Swindon, from March 14 to 16 (01793 524481, www.wyverntheatre.org.uk); and Aylesbury Waterside Theatre from March 24 to 26 (08448 717677, www.ambassadortickets.com/ aylesbury).