The title of David Bintley’s Galanteries, part of Birmingham Royal Ballet’s current touring repertoire, tells us all we need to know. Using lightweight music by the young Mozart, the fluid choreography skims through a series of graciously harmonious dances that include a lilting trio in which Natasha Oughtred is playfully swung back and forth over her partners’ heads like a pendulum. Another high point is a pretty duet performed with eloquent ease by Gaylene Cummerfield and her partner Matthew Lawrence. Created for the Royal Ballet in 1986, Galanteries is vintage Bintley at his best.

But posterity isn’t always fair. The Dance House, originally devised for San Francisco Ballet in 1995, was Bintley’s tribute to a friend who died of an Aids-related illness. No matter what impact it might have had originally, the piece now teeters on the brink of kitsch. The central role, a predatory death figure, is danced by Jamie Bond garbed in a garish costume by Robert Heindel. Bond’s pushy interpretation turns him into a sardonic joker intent on wreaking havoc. Of course it is the choreographer’s choice to cast death as a prankster, but the cartoon edges of Bond’s interpretation stretch credulity.

The Dance House is set to Shostakovich’s early concerto for piano, trumpet and string orchestra. Written in 1933, it is played here with raucously schizophrenic verve by Jonathan Higgins and the trumpeter Michael Allen.

Frederick Ashton’s ebullient staging of The Dream was his contribution to the national celebrations for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birthday in 1964. It remains one of the happiest treats in the Ashton catalogue. Oughtred and Joseph Caley danced well at the performance I saw, but sparks weren’t flying. He is perhaps too boyish for Oberon and she has yet to embody Titania’s sensuous abandon.

Peter Farmer’s designs date from 1966. Very like those first seen at Covent Garden, they are dominated by blues and greens that are probably meant to evoke moonlight, but too often seem subaquatic instead. And the entire performance was swathed in a translucent stage-wide gauze at the front, thus sacrificing clarity in a misguided attempt at atmosphere.

Birmingham Royal Ballet is at the Lowry, Salford (0870 7875780), until Sat

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