Birmingham Royal Ballet has split in two. This temporary division creates winners all round: it permits the company to visit venues that could not accommodate the full troupe, and allows the lower ranks of dancers to get exposure in bigger roles. So it was at the Lighthouse, which received an attractive programme of Sir Frederick Ashton’s Dante Sonata, company first artist Kit Holder’s Small Worlds and Kenneth MacMillan’s Elite Syncopations.

The greatest achievement of David Bintley’s directorship so far is the resurrection of Dante Sonata, one of Sir Fred’s wartime ballets. It is Sir Fred in unfamiliar vein – bare feet, loose hair and expressionistic movement – and a precious example of this side to our greatest choreographer. It is a fine work, more subtle in its standpoint than the struggle between the Children of Light and those of Darkness would suggest, and in Poole the small stage and the piano-only version of Constant Lambert’s rearrangement of Liszt intensified the experience. Rory Mackay conveyed true malevolence in Robert Helpmann’s old role and Laëtitia Lo Sardo was suitably anguished in Pamela May’s “Labour” part, the solo finely delivered. This is a precious work and Bintley is to be applauded for his belief in it.