Dance critic DAVID BELLAN on an impressive start to the Royal Ballet's season

The Royal Ballet opened its new season at the Opera House with a triple bill that showed the company in excellent form.

Tryst brings together three of the most exciting talents working in dance today - the composer James MacMillan, whose sensational success at the 1990 proms took him from obscurity to international fame; Christopher Wheeldon, a very talented young dancer from the Royal Ballet School who has found his greatest success as a choreographer working mainly in America; and the company's own Darcey Bussell.

The 'tryst' of the title is the central section of a dance work in three parts. It opens to MacMillan's striking amalgam of short percussive sections contrasted with singing strings, with the company in a series of dances somewhat in the manner of Balanchine: not surprising, considering Wheeldon's long association with New York City Ballet.

A strong beginning, but it serves mainly to lead us to the meeting of the two principals (Bussell partnered as usual by the reliable Jonathan Cope) who alone on stage dance out a long and impassioned duet to Macmillan's now solemn, now rapturous music. Cope, in black, is a slightly nebulous figure here, serving mainly to display Bussell through a long and complex dance. Even during its most arresting contortions Bussell's line is superb, her legs, encased in white, as expressive as her arms. The work closes with the whole cast as shadowy figures in silhouette.

Mark Morris's Gong is set to Colin McPhee's musical fusion of Balinese influences and Western tonalities. Despite the brightly coloured costumes - with awkward and inappropriate tutus - this is a joyless, though not unenjoyable, piece. All the same one wonders whether it is worth burdening a dancer of the calibre of Alina Cojocaru with a huge, stiff tutu in the most shocking of pinks, and forcing her into some fairly mundane choreography.

Finally came Mats Ek's stunning version of Carmen. No Spanish sunshine or authentic costumes here. This is a stark and disturbing insight into the consequences of a woman's manipulation of men. In the title role, Sylvie Guillem is by turns dominant, contemptuous, anguished and crudely seductive. It is a virtuoso performance by the company's most dramatic dancer. This Carmen is in total control. in one telling scene she symbolically draws out the essence of the two men in the form of coloured scarves - Jos's from his breast, Escamillo's from his groin. Massimo Murru and Jonathan Cope fill their roles well, Cope's arrogant vanity as Escamillo bringing perhaps the only touch of humour, his glittering costume closer to the disco than the bull-ring. Not surprisingly, given his background, Mats Ek's piece is full of doom-laden Scandinavian angst, a superb work with highly original choreography.

We see the story as a flashback. The work opens with Jos lined up against a wall, waiting to be executed for Carmen's murder by a row of riflemen. The men are given some striking movements throughout, sometimes speeding and shouting, then progressing bent and angular like segments of a giant caterpillar. At the end, the shooting takes place. But this is Carmen's story, and ultimately it is Guillem who makes it so powerful.

Published in The Oxford Times, October 25