Encounters at the Royal Ballet review: spiky and reflective works – despite the hour-long interval

The Royal Ballet’s programme of new and recent work runs almost three hours, and one whole hour of that is interval. I don’t know what hold Big Catering has over the company, but whatever it is, it commits them to seemingly endless intervals, peddling pinot, fizz and shoals of smoked salmon. Good for the bars, bad for the art: it does a quartet of spiky and reflective works no favours to drag out the evening towards the edge of doom.

Oceans rise, empires fall between the first and last pieces, each previously performed here. Opening the show is Kyle Abraham’s The Weathering. It’s a beaut. Exquisitely lit by Dan Scully, paper lanterns glowing through the midnight blue, it offers a haze of relationships. Two ballerinas dart between a gaggle of young guys in silky folds, their soft, grave movement almost ceaseless.