There's never been much doubt, of course, but on Friday night Alina Cojocaru and Johan Kobborg confirmed again that they're easily the best dance partnership in London, and probably everywhere else as well.

Actually, dance partnership is the wrong description, a business studies sort of term that little hints at their on-stage magic.

Cojocaru and Kobborg are at the peak of their powers, and as Tatiana and Onegin in John Cranko's version of Pushkin's tragedy, they not so much set Covent Garden alight as burnt down most of the West End.

The sorrow of that unhappy pair, his pride, her innocence, was so effectively conveyed that you almost flinch.

In the last act, when Onegin, a broken man, declares his love, Tatiana drags him across the stage, feeling the dead, desperate weight of his regret. We feel it, too, and then the surge of hope during her soaring split leap. High, higher than his shoulder she reaches. Surely help will come from someone, somewhere, to stop the unhappiness, and comfort the recognition of our own.

Made in 1965, Onegin is, in fact, a far from perfect ballet, more a series of duets than a full-company work. Many of the group sequences are underpopulated (you almost OK Onegin's bad behaviour - Tatiana's birthday is not much of a party), and others are pretty functional, such as the cod Russian dancing in Act I.

There's also creaky theatrical effects, and music that's a tum-tiddly-pom Tchaikovsky patchwork, plus twee acting for the women and melodramatic tash twiddling for the men.

However, Cranko was among those who started the shift in ballet from swans and swains to a dramatic art form on a par with theatre's Angry Young Men. This chimed with his younger friend and colleague Kenneth MacMillan, who caught up and overtook him with ballets such as Manon and Mayerling.

But Onegin still works, at least with a cast like Friday's. The post-injury Ivan Putrov continued his stellar comeback as Lensky, an idealistic young man enraged by Olga's flirtation with Onegin. During that scene, he has little to do but look cross, yet you couldn't peel your eyes.

Bennet Gartside was a dignified Prince Gremin, Tatiana's gentle husband, although Sarah Lamb failed to make her usual impression as Olga. The competition was stiff.

• In rep until 12 April. 020 7304 4000. www.roh.org.uk.