he first time I saw Vadim Muntagirov dance was in 2010, not long after he had joined English National Ballet from the Royal Ballet upper school. He was Siegfried in Derek Deane’s in-the-round version of Swan Lake at the Royal Albert Hall and despite competition from 60 swans, this slim, slightly gawky young man was by far the most emotionally engaging and interesting thing about the evening. Since then, like many dance-lovers, I’ve tracked his progress, watching him as he moved from ENB to the Royal Ballet and grew into one of the most technically assured and classically noble dancers working today. His performances are always thrilling, intelligent and committed, but even so, seeing him in Balanchine’s Apollo represented a new apotheosis. This is of course perfect because Balanchine’s 1928 ballet is a representation of a young god coming into his birthright by accepting the gifts of the muses – and particularly the power of dance. It’s a sublimely beautiful piece, both traditional and modern, its clean lines and intricate patterns retaining their capacity to surprise and satisfy. Muntagirov brought absolute clarity to each soaring jump and skyward reach, but he also found a kind of ferocity, a way of making Apollo’s journey from birth to manhood dramatically engaging. He’s a dancer whose modesty and care for his art makes him refuse roles until he feels he is ready for them; on this showing, the repertory is now his to command. His muses – serene Yasmine Naghdi, lively Anna Rose O’Sullivan and joy-filled Mayara Magri – rose to his challenge. The difference a dancer can make was also in evidence in the way Natalia Osipova illuminated the Tchaikovsky pas de deux with verve and startling show-off speed. Her broad grin as she attacked its complexities transformed a party piece into something that felt more meant, a tribute (like Apollo) to the expressiveness of dance itself. Her partner, Reece Clarke, just about kept up. In the glorious Dances at a Gathering, which concluded the bill, the choreographer Jerome Robbins makes explicit the sense of wonder that dance can conjure. Couples meet and part, express love and friendship, to the sounds of Chopin’s piano pieces, played magnificently by Robert Clark. William Bracewell and Francesca Hayward mined the loveliness with particular grace; Marianela Nuñez and Federico Bonelli found a sombre quality in their gentle duet. The current cohort of Royal Ballet dancers is impressive, but that depth of talent is visible across British dance. That was part of what Darcey Bussell’s British Ballet Charity Gala set out to celebrate, with the simultaneous purpose of raising money for the eight dance companies taking part and the exceptional community dance groups they support. Its good-heartedness got a little lost in the echoing spaces of the Royal Albert Hall – it will undoubtedly come across better when it is streamed from 18 June – but its breadth and range impressed. Highlights included an incisive contribution from Ballet Black in Will Tuckett’s intriguing Then or Now, with Cira Robinson particularly lovely, and a wonderful injection of triumphant tutu glamour from Momoko Hirata and César Morales of Birmingham Royal Ballet in a pas de deux from David Bintley’s Cinderella. Abigail Prudames and Joseph Taylor, from Northern Ballet, provided a sharply danced and deeply melancholy pas de deux from Jonathan Watkins’s 1984. The same dancers starred as the Marquise de Merteuil and Valmont in David Nixon’s adaptation of Dangerous Liaisons, which arrived in London last week, at the same time as Nixon announced he would be stepping down as artistic director of Northern Ballet after 20 years. He’s very much shaped it in a particular image, creating new narrative ballets that have won them many fans. This adaptation of Dangerous Liaisons, however, is one I find hard to love. It has a certain sense of style, but by compressing Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s 18th-century epistolary novel into a series of fleeting encounters, it loses the calibrations of behaviour and morality which make the story worthwhile in the first place. There are a lot of big lifts and swirling turns, but it’s gestural rather than revealing. The dancers all do their best – Antoinette Brooks-Daw is a touching Madame de Tourvel, but it’s not enough to prevent a slight sense of pointlessness descending. Star ratings (out of five) Balanchine and Robbins ★★★★★ British Ballet Charity Gala ★★★ Dangerous Liaisons ★★