How many more chances can one give their fellow principal Rupert Pennefather before throwing in the towel? He's a handsome devil, a veritable Bellini spear-carrier – and I have repeatedly hoped to be swayed by him. But, at this level, being easy on the eye is not enough. Last month, he was an empty suit as the lead in Kenneth MacMillan's Mayerling. And here, as Oedipus, his earthbound performance is made to look crushingly mortal.

Watson, by cruel contrast, is here as bestially incandescent as he is technically formidable, paying scant regard to gravity and whipping his legs across the stage like ferocious licks of flame. Nuñez is as lustrous as Garbo and as predatory as a velociraptor, every wanton contortion of her frame signalling destructive lust. Together, she and Watson alchemise the work's excesses into a giddily seductive whole.

With Chroma and Infra under his belt, the challenge for Wayne McGregor, the Royal Ballet’s resident choreographer, is to keep the hits coming. The good news is that Limen, his latest premiere, finds him elongating and enriching his vocabulary in the company of Covent Garden’s wonderfully accomplished dancers (the casting is a luxury beyond belief). The less good news is that Limen lacks the dynamic buzz and thematic punchline of its predecessors.

This is not to damn it as a failure — far from it. Limen is less disorientating than previous McGregor creations, yet still trades in unsettled, dislocated and hurried energies, qualities it shares with its luscious music, Notes on Light, a cello concerto by the Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. The score, drenched in eddies of dark emotion that soar into the sparest of lines, is beautifully realised by Barry Wordsworth, the ROH Orchestra and the solo cellist Anssi Karttunen, for whom the work was composed.

The ballet will convert the former rectory of the St. John the Baptist Catholic Church. The church building itself was converted several years ago into the Church Brew Works. It will house up to 16 students and a full-time resident advisor. Renovation is expected to be completed before the 2010 Intensive Study Program begins in June.

Ballet officials completed their $290,000 purchase of the building, located next to the Church Brew Works on Liberty Avenue, earlier this week, said Harris Ferris, the ballet company's executive director. It is a few blocks from the ballet headquarters and school at 2900 Liberty Ave.

The ballet school has been searching for an opportunity to house its out-of-town, high school-age students in a residential facility rather than scrambling for host families every year, Mr. Ferris said.

An evening at the ballet doesn’t often get me musing on Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.

However, Birmingham Royal Ballet, keen to be modern innovators of high art classicism, are doing just that with a trio of works with the (electric) shock factor.

The Three Riddles of Turandot" is the first of a three-performance series of repertory concerts, including "Tappin' with the Ballet" on Jan. 16, featuring the New Jersey Tap Dance Ensemble, and "Highlights of the Russian Ballet" on May 15. The season also features children's programming such as "Cinderella" and "Sleeping Beauty[img]http://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/2.gif[/img]," as well as a "month full of 'Nutcrackers,' " said New Jersey Ballet executive/artistic director Carolyn Clark.

"We've been reaching out to people who might not be solid ballet fans, with shows that feature ballet with a Latin beat, a ballet of opera, or ballet on Broadway," Clark said. "This year, 'The Three Riddles of Turandot' is a very different and interesting piece, with an extremely talented choreographer."

It's as beautiful as they said it would be, Jiri Kylian's "Petite Mort"...one of those ballets that is too short...one of those ballets where I wish there were a RePlay button I could press...one of those ballets where musicality and line seem so refined and inventive.

Sexy, and as preoccupied with sex as its name would indicate, the piece is riveting right from the beginning: men walking backwards out of the darkness, with foils (the sword-type, not highlights) balanced on their fingertips. It's not acrobatics and it doesn't devolve into a drill team as they swoop and thrust and roll the foils around; somehow it remains dance.

The choice goods are loaded right up front in Pacific Northwest Ballet's "Director's Choice," an evening of four dances.

The program openers, Jiri Kylian's "Petite Mort" (1991) and Marco Goecke's "Mopey" (2004), both have a heady, visceral kick to them. It's especially good to have the Kylian entering the PNB repertory — his first piece to do so. Maybe it means we'll see more work by this genie of Nederlands Dans Theater.