Ballet Rambert are celebrating their 90th year and touring amongst other pieces a revival of Ghost Dances by Christopher Bruce.  It's wonderful.

When the curtain rises we see three macabre figures standing stock still, looking into the distance, dimly lit and silhoutted against a backdrop that suggests we are in a cave looking out onto a plain interrupted by rocky peaks.  They begin to dance in a silence broken only by the susurration of an increasingly bitter wind.  Their dance is sinister, wild and fearsome.

When music does come it is the plaintive lilt of Andean pipes, the clear notes of the guitar and Spanish song accompanying the entry of a group of men and women who are perhaps come to celebrate the day of the dead.  They dance in various combinations.  The three spirits watch and from time to time join their dances. 

Ultimately they leave the stage and the three ghost dancers return to the silent contemplation with which the piece began. Lighting, costumes, music, choreography and superb physical skills had given us thirty unforgettable minutes.

Not so the other two pieces on the programme. Tomorrow starts with a single dancer in a beige coloured shift oozing herself out from a slot in the back wall and dancing jerkily downstage.  She's joined by quite a few others, dressed similarly and dancing in much the same fashion.  I had them down as mechanical toys.  Perhaps this was a new take on the Nutcracker or Coppelia.

They kept themselves to one side of the stage while on the other people dressed in black tops and trousers strode about, left the stage, returned, pointed up, pointed across, gathered in groups, raised imaginary glasses, slit throats and so on.  They were obviously telling a story but I couldn't make it out.  At one point a chap came on and removed some imaginary headgear and I thought maybe he's a king or maybe a motorcyle courier.  But frankly it was a distraction from the perfectly pleasant though unclear as to its meaning dancing going on stage left.

It wasn't till I got home and glanced at the flyer that I learnt that I'd been watching Macbeth.  Witches cavorting on one side while the play was being performed backwards on the other.

If I'd read and watched all the stuff here before seeing it I would probably have a less uncharitable opinion of the work than I do. But uncharitable I am and will remain.

No mugging up in advance was needed to understand Frames but I didn't much enjoy that either.  Dancers came on with variously sized lengths of aluminium rail and ponced about with them, as single lengths or snapped together in different combinations to make frames in and around which the dancers moved.  So?  A bit like virtuosic piano playing without any emotional content.

The lady sitting next to me had come from Glasgow to see the show and when we exchanged enthusiastic comments about Ghost Dances she said she'd probably go to see Rambert again when they hit Glasgow in February.  I think that would be a good thing to do but I'd spend the first hour and forty minutes in the bar with a good book.

The Good Book was the source of almost all of the libretto of Handel's Israel in Egypt that I saw and heard courtesy of the SCO on Thursday.  I enjoyed it thoroughly.  It reminded me a little of the saying that history is written by the victors.  Words and music throughout enthusiastically revelled in the triumph of the Israelites.  God was clearly on their side.  He smote, he plagued, he drowned those poor Egyptians giving not a toss for their first-borns.  But no frogs were harmed in the making of this epic.

I met a singer friend in the interval who was there to suss it out because his choir are doing it next year sometime.  He loved it but declared that it was quite a sing and thought he might not have the stamina for it.  At 91 and still performing I can forgive him that thought and only hope to match the stamina he's already shown.