The evening’s Aurora, B?ara Garc? has the steps, but her gestures and facial expressions look second-hand. Yet those same feet look blurry in held positions, smudging the line of arabesques.I was reminded of the Trocks: this company, like the New York drag ballet, harks back to an age of ballerina divas in blue eyeshadow. Viengsay Vald?and Linnet Gonz?z, as the Swan Queen and Sugar Plum, show the same care over footwork. Dancing petits battements serr? in which one foot beats fast against the other, both are so clean and firm that you can hear the tiniest rattle. Delgado is a lively heroine, spinning fouett?with insouciance, then pouncing on the footwork. Delgado and Fr?a are the stars of the evening, but the whole company look happy in it, from the strutting corps of bullfighters to Karelia S?hez’s skittish Mercedes.Alonso has created a clear national style: you see the same qualities in very different dancers.

Annette Delgado and R? Fr?a romp through it with a sense of ease and pleasure. Fr?a’s jump is light and buoyant: he bounds up without strain, the line of his legs sharp and clean. Cuban training is famously strong on jumps and turns, and this pas de deux is a firework display. The parent company is popular, too: this programme was quickly arranged after last summer’s successful visit.

You can see why this company produces stars, but also why those stars might choose to leave. Magia de la Danza, a greatest-hits programme, barely ventures out of the 19th century. We see extracts from the six most famous classical ballets, all staged by the company’s founder, Alicia Alonso, with a corps number and a duet each time.
The Don Quixote scene is the best. In Magia de la Danza, the Ballet Nacional de Cuba has a timewarped air.