Some day their prince will come

The Royal Ballet is a company in search of a prince. It has no lack of dancing princesses. You could search the kingdom and find no lovelier dancers than Marianela Nunez, Lauren Cuthbertson, Francesca Hayward, Natalia Osipova, Akane Takada, Sarah Lamb, Laura Morera and Yasmine Naghdi. But a true prince is as rare as a golden egg. Since Sergei Polunin went so energetically awol in 2012, the Royal Ballet has lacked a male principal with all four virtues of the leading man: classic handsome looks, height, faultless technique and some gift as an actor. Polunin had it all. He was dishy, dashing and dangerous. He had a fifth quality, too: seductive, flaring charisma. The company was less without him, and he lost without them.

Edward Watson is unmatchable: dark, fierce, magnetic, but at 42 is a little lined for Romeo. Thiago Soares is powerful, piratically good-looking, but more brave than refined. Steven McRae is a thriller, a fire-cracker, a bolt of electricity, but his lines are compact where they might be long. Ryoichi Hirano and Federico Bonelli give good matinee idol, but their acting is weak and old-fashioned. Alexander Campbell is a neat, springy, joyful dancer, but there is something of the school prefect about him, a touch too alert and self-conscious. Vadim Muntagirov, who was Polunin’s contemporary at the Royal Ballet School, is an almost perfect prince. He dances with extraordinary hummingbird lightness. His evident delight in his art is catching. I would happily watch him dance every role in every performance, but the poor man must have a night off.

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Hopes rest, then, on Matthew Ball’s fine shoulders. In Ball, promoted to principal last season, the Royal Ballet may have its hero. In true heroic style, Ball jetéd to the rescue earlier this year when the visiting American David Hallberg was injured dancing Giselle opposite Osipova.