The Royal Ballet's return was joyous – but the presenter was gushing and witless

Mothballed since March when it danced a farewell Swan Lake, the Royal Ballet made a triumphant and joyous return to Covent Garden last Friday, performing a string of ancient and modern works before an invited audience of 400. Meanwhile, around the country (and the world) ballet-starved viewers paid £16 to watch a Vimeo livestream.

Jonathan Lo and the 83-strong orchestra, enjoying added elbow room in the stalls, set the tone for an emotional evening with the Sleeping Beauty overture — the ballet that famously reopened the Opera House after the second world war. It was a natural and poignant choice, but director Kevin O’Hare hadn’t succumbed to ancestor worship. Balanchine, Ashton and MacMillan were all present and correct but there were regular reminders of more recent acquisitions.

Every star had a showcase— Medusa for Natalia Osipova, Woolf Works for the soon-to-retire Edward Watson — and the corps and soloists were shown off in extracts from longer pieces. There was a 20-man synchronised trudge from Hofesh Shechter’s Untouchable, the closing moments from Christopher Wheeldon’s elysian Within the Golden Hour and the evening ended on a high with a supersized restaging of Kenneth MacMillan’s candy-coloured ragtime extravaganza Elite Syncopations.

Watch two dancers embrace, and you still get that strange, Covid-conscious frisson when flesh meets flesh

These numbers proved that it is possible to rehearse a socially distanced ensemble (which bodes well for December’s downsized Nutcracker) but the bulk of Friday’s programme consisted of duets. Luckily for O’Hare and his répétiteurs, several Royal Ballet principals are offstage couples. Others, such as Marianela Nunez and Vadim Muntagirov, work in tight rehearsal bubbles. The whole process is as safe as masks and testing can make it and yet watch two dancers embrace and you still get that strange, Covid-conscious frisson when flesh meets flesh.