Alexei Ratmansky, who now runs the Bolshoi Ballet, is fast proving himself an adept director. But his skills as a choreographer have also been on show during the Bolshoi’s London season, and they are no less impressive.

After the triumph of his full-length Shostakovich staging, The Bright Stream, came the London premiere of his one-act Go For Broke, a zippy new creation set to Stravinsky’s Jeu de Cartes. Ratmansky made Go For Broke to sharpen his dancers’ technique, and that it certainly does. No mere exercise, though, it also entertains with its cheerful characterisations and sparkling mischief-making.

Ratmansky jettisons the ballet’s original libretto, favouring a plotless approach to Stravinsky’s score. His is a fast-moving ballet that takes every opportunity to play games with and to rhythm, seesawing between well-behaved classicism and a childlike delight in bursts of impish humour. It looks good too, with clever costume changes enabling the designs to switch gradually from purple to yellow. The performances (eight men and seven women) bubbled with confidence; indeed, one of the surprises of the London season has been how well everyone is dancing.

But what is Roland Petit playing at? His Pique Dame (2001) is a preposterous reworking of Pushkin’s poem The Queen of Spades, set to Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony. Petit’s choreography is dismal: awkward, vulgar and supremely silly, pointless and tedious beyond belief.

Nikolai Tsiskaridze’s role as the obsessive gambler Hermann is to emote with conviction while hallucinating like mad, which he seems to interpret as staring a lot. As the Countess who knows the secret of the winning cards, Ilze Liepa chews the scenery in a passionate impersonation of Martha Graham — and who can blame her? We rarely see Petit’s work in this country; the Bolshoi reminds us why.

Thank heavens for Balanchine’s ebullient Symphony in C, which quite obliterated the lingering bad taste of Petit’s nightmare on this triple bill. Led by the delightful Anastasia Yatsenko, Svetlana Zakharova, Maria Alexandrova, and Ekaterina Shipulina, the company rode its classical high like surfers on a wave of white tutus. So buoyant, such fun.