It has taken a bit of time due to Covid and lockdown restrictions but we are finally beginning to see director Carlos Acosta’s vision for Birmingham Royal Ballet.

Featuring three works new to the company, this Into the Music triple bill is challenging for the dancers and yet they pull it off in magnificent style. The programme is hugely varied and draws on a wide range of skills not just from the company’s principal dancers but across the corps de ballet particularly with the final piece which sees a stage full of performers.

The programme begins with Czech choreographer Jiří Kylián’s Forgotten Land which features six couples in a visual feast inspired by Norwegian painter Edvard Munch. The work demands precision from each of the dancers as the couples join and pull apart in a blend of yearning, tenderness and sadness. All the cast are wonderful but special mention has to go to Céline Gittens and Tyrone Singleton for their exquisite performance as the Black Couple.

With a seascape backdrop designed by John Macfarlane and set to Benjamin Britten’s Sinfonia da requiem, Forgotten Land has a sense of foreboding about it, leaving us unsure of the fates of its protagonists.

Morgann Runacre-Temple’s premiere Hotel sits in a totally different genre, being a narrative piece taking us into the secrets of a sinister hotel. When a group of guests arrive, no doubt expecting a night of peace and quiet, we discover all is not as it appears to be.

The work is complemented by film by Runacre-Temple and Jessica Wright which reveals the action inside the hotel rooms and provides a kaleidoscope of images which interact with the dancers and recreate their movements. Sami Fendall’s designs feature a hotel corridor with doors and yet we are able to see beyond these doors thanks to the film which reveals the management watching their guests on CCTV.

Created as part of BRB’s ongoing programme to commission new work, Ballet Now, Hotel taps into our fears of the vulnerability of being asleep and at someone’s mercy in a strange setting. Tzu-Chao Chou plays a super-creepy hotel manager while Beatrice Parma is his assistant manager - remind me never to invite those two over for dinner.

The programme concludes with Uwe Scholz’s The Seventh Symphony which is set to Beethoven’s glorious Symphony No Seven. Reflecting the energy and passion in the music, Scholz’s choreography calls for a great deal from the dancers as they match the myriad notes with a phenomenal number of steps and some complex lifts.

At times the focus is on a single performer or a pas de deux and at others the stage is filled with dancers all moving in synchrony both with the music and with each other. Designed by Scholz, the work features a rainbow backdrop and multicoloured stripes on white and grey costumes so that, as they move, the dancers fill the stage with colour.

Under the baton of guest conductor Thomas Jung, the Royal Ballet Sinfonia give superb musical performances of both the classic Britten and Beethoven and also of the new score for Hotel by Mikael Karlsson.

Into the Music launches the new BRB season which also features popular classics including Coppélia, The Nutcracker and Swan Lake. If this triple bill is a sign of things to come, it should be a spectacular season.

Five stars

Reviewed by Diane Parkes at Birmingham Hippodrome on Friday 21 October. Birmingham Royal Ballet's Into The Music continues at the venue on Sat 22 October. The Company then presents Coppélia at Birmingham Hippodrome from Wed 26 to Sat 29 October and The Nutcracker from Sat 19 November until Sat 10 December.