Sir Peter Wright, BRB’s Founding Director Laureate, brought the former Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet to the city in 1990 and remained its director until 1995. His contribution to the company and to ballet was celebrated in images and music on screen and in spoken tributes to a full house at Birmingham Hippodrome.

The audience had already enjoyed excerpts from some of his best-loved productions and the ballet in which he made his dancing debut. Then came a final flourish as the curtain rose to reveal Sir Peter seated centre stage in a throne-like chair caught in the spotlight and visibly taking in the adulation. Beaming with delight, he was joined by the evening’s cast, other BRB dancers, friends and relatives as glitter showered the stage.

The evening opened in exuberant fashion with the Grand Défilé Polonaise from Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin performed by students from Birmingham’s Elmhurst Ballet School.

Excerpts from ballets produced and, in some cases, co-choreographed by Sir Peter followed, beginning with Act III from Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty in which Mathias Dingman as Prince Florimund and Momoko Hirata as Princess Aurora were outstanding dancing together with perfect chemistry.

The chocolate box-like assortment included the Act III pas de deux from Léo Delibes’ Coppélia, the Act II pas de deux from Adolphe Adam’s Giselle, and excerpts from Act III of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. All were supported by the excellent Royal Ballet Sinfonia and showed BRB at its absolute best.

Perhaps it was just a little too much to expect an excerpt from The Nutcracker, Sir Peter’s personal gift to Birmingham and widely regarded as the finest version of Tchaikovsky’s Christmas classic.

After the interval, virtuoso grace and elegance gave way to expressive drama with BRB’s first performance since 1992 of The Green Table, Kurt Jooss’s 1932 anti-war ballet. It was the work in which Sir Peter made his dancing debut after securing an apprenticeship there, much to his parents’ disapproval. Subtitled a Dance of Death in Eight Scenes, the one-act ballet was performed with aplomb, its dancers using each movement and pose to express inner motives, from the indifference of political negotiators (the Gentlemen in Black) to the suffering of the soldiers, partisans, refugees and families caught up in war.

Max Maslen stood out as The Old Soldier, alongside Samara Downs as The Old Mother and Riku Ito as The Profiteer. Most striking of all was BRB Director Carlos Acosta as a skeletal clockwork-like Death moving through the shadows of every scene on the stark stage before leading the dead away linked in a grim dance.

The highly-accessible ballet, which Sir Peter considered one of the greatest of all time, was accompanied on two pianos, played by Jeanette Wong and Yen Lee – and its message about war and political diplomacy remains as powerful as ever.

Addressing the audience, Carlos summed up what many would see as Sir Peter’s legacy: “What Peter achieved in 100 years will be an inspiration to dancers and audiences worldwide for the next thousand years.”

Birmingham Royal Ballet will revive Sir Peter Wright and Galina Samsova’s production of Swan Lake at Birmingham Hippodrome from September 23rd until October 3rd (Tickets & Information 0844 338 5000 / birminghamhippodrome.com)