The vocabulary of ballet is limited enough and nothing but a passion for adjectives can do justice to the production by the Perm State Ballet's of Don Quixote at the Opera House.
The classical tradition symbolised by Perm natives Tchaikovsky and Diaghilev is by now under-valued in popular terms, but if ever a reminder of that tradition at its very best were needed, these dancers can provide it.
They make nothing - as with other ballets in the company's repertoire- of the nonsensical narrative, which is less an attempt by librettist and choreographer Petipa to tell the famous story than to use it as an excuse for a series of divertissements.
A tone of exuberance is struck from the first entry of Elena Kulagina as Kitri, the Don's imaginary Dulcinea, which introduces the succession of pas de deux which follow through three acts to the glittering climax of the great duet of act three.
With Radiy Miniakhmetov, this prima ballerina dominates the ballet; their one-arm lifts, elevations and leaps have a radiant ebullience, seeming to flow from sculpted footwork to aerial abandonment, all the while retaining the spirit of the lightly sketched characters they portray. Their brilliance punctuates the visually coherent corps de ballet which in turn offers a menu of duets, trios and quartets as fiesta after fiesta celebrates one event of village life or another.
It is all within the idiom, all perfectly detailed and precise. The stylistic convention used over the last decade or so for costumes and set is one of bright Spanish colours, crimson, orange, white and gold; the travelling sets are attractive, the taped score (Minkus in waltz time) obviously known semi-breve by semi-breve to the dancers.
It is all, especially Kulagina's dream solo, marvellous, but what is important is that the ethereal form of Igor Shes terkov's Don Quixote, stalking almost blindly through the action, supplies a reflective pathos to a presentation which is otherwise entirely joyous.
The Perm State Ballet Of Russia performs at the Olympia Theatre, Dublin, tomorrow at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. and then tours to Letterkenny, Galway and Limerick