Balanchine: Three Signature Works review – visions of perfection

Royal Opera House, London
An immensely satisfying tribute to the choreographer is full of invention, emotion and dazzling precisionGeorge Balanchine’s Serenade has the most beautiful opening in ballet. Seventeen women standing like statues, bathed in cool blue light, raise one hand in the air, palms outwards, as the music of Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings surges around them. It has the most elegiac closing moment too, as a single standing ballerina is lifted aloft by four men, cu