This mixed programme from the Royal Ballet brings together two of Jerome Robbins’ masterpieces with Kenneth MacMillan’s powerful depiction of love and loss.

A striking depiction of the varying shades of romantic love, In The Night was created for New York City Ballet in 1970. It features three very different couples – one of young lovers, another elegant and refined, and the last tempestuously passionate – who dance a series of sumptuous pas de deux.

Robbins’ Afternoon Of A Faun is a modern ballet classic. A male dancer is sleeping in a ballet studio. Languidly he rises and begins to stretch. A girl enters and begins to warm up at the barre. They fall into a trancelike pas de deux, which ends with the boy kissing the girl on the cheek.

Created in 1953, early in Robbins’ career, Afternoon Of A Faun was inspired not only by Debussy’s music and the choreography of Nijinsky’s scandalous 1912 ballet, but by the dancers around Robbins in the rehearsal studio. An essay on narcissism, an idle dream or a parable of sexual awakening? Robbins’ subtle and ambiguous setting lets the audience decide for themselves.

The programme closes with MacMillan’s Song Of The Earth, which is set in 1958 creating an elegiac work of breathtaking beauty.

Find out more about the rich variety of West End shows on offer in Theatreland.