Rambert

The Alhambra

SHARP-SUITED, snake-hipped young men strut across the stage like preening cockerels, pausing occasionally to slick back hair or strike a pose.

Weaving among them are sassy women in mini dresses, taking control as they swirl scarves into the air.

A series of sexy courtship dances unfold to the raw, earthy blues music of the Rolling Stones in Rambert's landmark routine, Rooster.

Britain's national dance company set the Alhambra stage alight last night with three dazzling sequences headed by Christopher Bruce's Rooster, celebrating the Sixties and Stones classics such as Paint it Black, Not Fade Away and Lady Jane.

With comic swagger and cartoon-like posturing, it's a hypnotic performance that captures the raw energy of the Stones, rising from the laid black bluesy twang of Little Red Rooster to a high energy ensemble piece to Sympathy for the Devil.

Mick Jagger's bad boy charisma is personified largely by lead dancer and strutting rooster, the excellent Miguel Altunaga.

Also on the bill is Dark Arteries, a haunting dance driven by the rousing and often eerie sound of brass. There's something very special about seeing a world-famous Yorkshire brass band - the Carlton Main Frickley Colliery Band - on stage with a troupe of world-class dancers.

Inspired by Mervyn Peake's poem Rhondda Valley, Dark Arteries marks 30 years since the miners’ strike and explores the legacy of brass band music that survives Britain's mining communities.

Choreographed by Mark Baldwin, Rambert’s artistic director, it's a series of crescendos, peaking in the middle then fading away. Men in shirt sleeves and braces dance in pairs or in groups with women in long skirts, evoking a sense of community now lost. The intention may have been something else, but that's what I got out of it.

I'm not so sure what I got out of Terra Incognita, a dance in three parts inspired by journeys and distance. Drawing on Indian classical dance, this was a fragmented, distant piece, set to a score that largely grated with me.

But there was no faulting the performance by a terrific company of dancers from around the world, including impressive Joshua Barwick (who also appeared in Dark Arteries), a former pupil of Shipley's DM Academy and a rising star.

Runs until tomorrow