'Curated by Carlos' by the Birmingham Royal Ballet at Sadler's Wells

'Curated by Carlos' is a triple bill of one-act ballets by the Birmingham Royal Ballet of which Carlos Acosta is the director. It's made up of 'City of a Thousand Trades', 'Imminent' and 'Chacona' and was being performed at a rather busy Sadler's Wells. I've never seen Carlos Acosta dance so the main draw was that he would dance with the great Alessandra Ferri as part of the show. I saw Alessandra dance at the Royal Opera House a few weeks ago and it's always special to see her on stage.

'City of a Thousand Trades' is a new work commissioned by Carlos Acosta as a love letter to Birmingham.  It's more choreographed movement than ballet with a weird musical landscape with lots of banging and strange percussion sounds. I found the music and movement quite distracting at times through the dance, and I kept thinking 'how on earth do they remember to raise an arm just there?' or 'move right just at that moment?'. There was no real fluidity to the work, nothing to suggest that this movement follows that movement, so how do they do it? Endless practice I suppose, with muscle memory, but also a lot of mental discipline. I'm pleased I saw it.

I preferred the second ballet, 'Imminent', which was more balletic, girls in slips and lads in vests and pants. They danced round the stage, leaping and posing, inter-changing duos as some ran on and some ran off and then got together as an ensemble again. It was a more 'traditional' piece so felt more familiar, less manic than the first dance. I thought it was beautiful.

The final piece was 'Chacona' and they'd saved the best till last. The music was by Bach but played by a piano, a violin and a guitar and that was really effective. As with the other two works, all the dancers were involved, dressed in black with dramatic lighting. In the first movement the dancers formed a 'wall' that moved every so often and Alessandra Ferri and Carlos Acosta moved through the 'wall' as they danced together, backward and forward from one side of the stage to the other. Alessandra is aged 58 and Carlos is 48 but you'd never guess. It was a joy to see them together and he effortlessly lifted her high into the air.

Then the ballet lads and lasses took over, pulling dramatic shapes in the dramatic lighting, moving together and then splitting into four rows of four dancers to dance and writhe in their personalised lighting before joining together again. It really was a dazzling performance of movement and sound. I hope to see it again one day.