Last June, the Royal Ballet from London performed Sleeping Beauty, Manon and a triple bill at the National Center for the Performing Arts. This week, its sister company, the Birmingham Royal Ballet (BRB) has brought two full-length ballets, Beauty and the Beast and Romeo and Juliet, to the same venue.

The company flew to Beijing on Sunday, having just performed Kenneth MacMillan's love tragedy Romeo and Juliet in Birmingham's twin city Guangzhou, last Friday and Saturday.

It will tonight perform its third and final production of director David Bintley's Beauty and the Beast before turning to Romeo and Juliet on Saturday and Sunday. In between, the Royal Ballet Sinfonia, the Orchestra of the Birmingham Royal Ballet, will tomorrow play at the Concert Hall of National Center for the Performing Arts. Then the company will move to Shanghai for four shows from Jan 21-24.

The tour to China is BRB's most ambitious in recent years and is designed to showcase the company. It became the Birmingham Royal Ballet in 1990, when Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet moved there from London. Everyone connected with the company proudly celebrates the versatility and flexibility of an organization that creates challenging new work alongside the classics.

"Over recent years, David Bintley's choreography has been very well received in Japan and Hong Kong. The tour to China is a fantastic opportunity to profile the company at an international level," says Christopher Barron, BRB's chief executive.

The fairytale Beauty and the Beast will be familiar to Chinese audiences. As one of Bintley's most successful pieces, it premiered in Birmingham in 2003 and charmed not only UK audiences but Japanese ballet lovers, too, during the company's tour there last year. The work features exquisite sets by designer Phillip Prowse, music by Canadian composer Glenn Buhr and lighting by Mark Jonathan.

The Beast is an arrogant and cruel nobleman who lives only for hunting but is turned into a beast by a woodsman, who is angered by the needless slaughter and can only be released by the promise of true love. One day, Belle, the sweet young daughter of a merchant, asks her father for a rose. He picks it from the Beast's garden and so triggers his daughter's fate.

It is not the story but the strength and contrast of the characters that was attractive to the choreographer.

"That's very much what I look for in a subject for narrative dance," says Bintley, "because I believe I have to have that outline, that choreographic feeling for the characters, the story and the period."

Kenneth MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet was first performed by the BRB in 1992 and is arguably the greatest love story ever told. The lifts and carries in the balcony pas de deux were considered outrageously innovative when the ballet debuted 40 years ago and still raise appreciative eyebrows.

MacMillan's choreography is as effective in the big, ensemble set pieces as for the lovers' intimate moments.

Audiences will thrill to the strutting arrogance and high-energy swordplay of the Capulet and Montague thugs, and will be moved by the tender explorations of Romeo and Juliet as fate impels them toward their tragic climax.

The shows also feature three Chinese dancers - Cao Chi as the Beast, Zhao Lei as the sister of Belle and Zhang Yijing in the group dance.

"I have been long dreamed of returning to China to perform for audiences at home," Cao says. "I hope our performance will make you love ballet more."

Cao was trained at the Beijing Dance Academy and the Royal Ballet School. He joined BRB in 1995 and was promoted to Principal in 2002.

(China Daily January 15, 2009)