Only the bedbug has bite

Triple Bill/Mariinsky
Coliseum
***

Into the theatre with girded loins this week, and the one after next, for the UK premier of five ballets to Shostakovich scores. The reason is the Shostakovich centenary, and the arrival of both the Mariinsky and the Bolshoi troupes who are falling over each other to doff their caps to Shostakovich.

But there's real appeal for dance fans. Unlike the familiar ballets of Prokofiev (Romeo & Juliet, Cinderella) and Stravinsky (Rite of Spring, Les Noces, Apollo), we barely know the Shostakovich rep. Many choreographers have used his concert music, yet we just don't see what Shostakovich created with Soviet choreographers and Soviet dancers.

This mixed bill of late-ish Shostakovich starts badly. Konstantin Boyarsky's The Young Lady and the Hooligan (1962) is a story of love across the divide. However, the music is melodically reticent, and Igor Zelensky and Svetlana Ivanova looked bored as the doomed lovers.

Only the falling-in-love duet gave us true feeling, as did Tatyana Tkachenko as Zelensky's foxy female distraction.

More interesting, and much fresher, was The Bedbug (1962). Looking like a darkly comic take on Les Noces, Leonid Jakobson's ballet sparked with racy humour and choreographic invention. He mixes music hall, Monty Python, and commedia del'arte, and has the dancers flexing their soft-slippered feet, knocking their knees and contorting with awkward gestures to reveal their emotional and sexual muddle.

Politically and temperamentally predictable was Igor Belsky's Leningrad Symphony (1961). It marks the siege of the Mariinsky's home town, and the troupe danced with big-scale conviction. Uber-ballerina Uliana Lopatkina gave a softly flowing depiction of the Girl. Noble, serene and stoic Soviet dancing, indeed.

Mixed bill, Thurs only. The Golden Age, Fri and Sat (0870 145 0200).