However often you're told about George Balanchine being a genius, nothing quite prepares you for Jewels. His three-part plotless ballet is so clever and innovative, yet so respectful of tradition, that it's like seeing all of ballet's history and all of its future at the same time.

And it's not just because there's a romantic-themed section (Emeralds), a classical section (Diamonds) and a modern-looking jazzy section (Rubies), all with in-sync music and costumes. Balanchine obviously shows us ballet's chronology, but also its infinite flex and variety, as well as its simultaneous restraint and sexy subversion.

Jubilant was the mood at the Opera House on Friday when The Royal Ballet danced Jewels for the first time. Balanchine made it for his own New York City Ballet in 1967, and while the Royal has danced Rubies since the 1980s, it's taken 40 years for the trinity to arrive. Balanchine, the story goes, was so impressed by the gems in Van Cleef & Arpels in his adopted New York, that he made a ballet inspired by them. For my tuppence, Emeralds is the least appealing, with its sombre Fauré music and Frenchy feel.

Rubies, though, is irresistible. It's a galloping riff of ingenuity, with deconstructions and re-assemblies, then skips and jogs and backward running. The ballet is Balanchine's homage to New York, with all its surging possibilities and thundering pace, and Stravinsky's Capriccio for Piano matches it note for step.

Sarah Lamb and Zenaida Yanowsky knocked pants off, although with his cashmere manners, Carlos Acosta was less good in this chiselled ballet.

If Rubies is the sun of sensuality, Diamonds is its moon. It's also Balanchine's genuflection to Tchaikovsky and St Petersburg, the town of his birth and where ballet flourished under the Tsars. Alina Cojocaru was sensational in the lead and Rupert Pennefather equalled her grace and dignity. This young Brit is finally rousing his sleeping promise.

• In rep until 7 December. Info: 020 7304 4000. www.roh.org.uk.