When Birmingham Royal Ballet’s junior company BRB2 was launched earlier this year its dancers were heralded as the ‘stars of the future’ - but it has to be said that a good many of them have a touch of star quality already.

This programme, chosen by BRB director Carlos Acosta and BRB2 artistic coordinator Kit Holder, has certainly been put together to show the dancers’ skill and dexterity across a wide range of different pieces and styles.

There is pure classical such as Frederick Ashton’s Rhapsody pas de deux and the romantic Act II pas de deux from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake but there is also contemporary works such as Will Tuckett’s Nisi Dominus and Ben Stevenson’s End of Time.

The company is currently formed of dancers who have been handpicked as they leave schools from across the globe and a number of members of BRB, with another cohort of new dancers joining next year on a rolling programme. And there is no doubt that the BRB team have chosen some artists worth watching in the future.

In some ways it feels unfair to pick out individuals because there are fine performances across the board but the attention to detail from Regan Hutsell and Jack Easton in Dying Swans is truly breath taking. Choreographed by Acosta after Michel Fokine and Michel Descombes, the piece features two dying swans whose every flutter and gasp holds the audience rapt. Their white costumes spotlighted against a dark stage, it is impossible to take your eyes off them.

So too Lucy Waine and Oscar Kempsey-Fagg bring out a beautiful lyricism in Stevenson’s End of Time. Set to Sergei Rachmaninov’s Cello Sonata in G Minor, the dancers are sinuous, moving in perfect symmetry in a piece which is sensitively portrayed with great technical ability.

And there’s also some fun with a sexy tango-inspired A Buenos Aires set to music by Astor Piazzolla in which Frieda Kaden and Jack Easton stalk across the stage. And in Ben Van Cauwenbergh’s Les Bourgeois we see character-driven dance with Enrique Bejarano Vidal as a booze-laden reveller switching back and forth between swaggers and staggers.

The inexperience of the young dancers shows more on the ensemble piece Majisimo by Jorge Garcia than in the solos and pas de deux. Here eight dancers take to the floor and while the performance is still strong there are some slight coordination issues, but this doesn’t really detract from the audience’s enjoyment of the piece.

At Northampton, the programme featured the Royal Ballet Sinfonia conducted by Paul Murphy which gives a real depth to the beautiful music of Garcia, Tchaikovsky, Herman Løvenskiold’s La Sylphide, and Cesare Pugni’s Diana and Actaeon. But this is hugely supplemented by both recordings of some of the songs and also piano by Jeanette Wong and cello by António Novais. At the other dates on the tour the performance is accompanied by Wong and Novais rather than the live orchestra, alongside recordings.

For a new company of dancers, BRB2 has a lot to be proud of. This is an ambitious programme which stretches the performers in a really strong launch. The team have ensured a first tour which sets the bar very high. Audiences can look forward to seeing how these young dancers go on to develop and perform at future shows not just with BRB2 but also with the main BRB company.

Four stars

Reviewed by Diane Parkes at Royal & Derngate Northampton on Tuesday 25 April. BRB2 Carlos Acosta's Classical Selection shows at Wolverhampton Grand Theatre on 24 June.