Pigs on pointe, dancing ducks and rabbits with rarefied manners. The Royal Ballet's Tales of Beatrix Potter will grate with many grown-ups but it's the sweetest of entertainment for young children. By that I mean under-10s, many of whom could be heard ooh-ing and ahh-ing at the Royal Opera House when The Royal Ballet performed Anthony Dowell's 1992 stage production of Frederick Ashton's 1971 dance film of Potter's books.

The production evokes the balmiest of pastoral dreamscapes, with Potter's woodland, river bank and cabbage patch so strongly evoked that you can almost smell wet grass. Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, Peter Rabbit, Squirrel Nutkin and Jemima Puddle-Duck inhabit an English idyll, and Ashton has them dancing so merrily you almost believe Potter's characters have been brought to life.

The sets and costumes are wonderful, and even if the ballet is a little too long, and, as I say, strictly for children, it is charming.

It is perfectly paired with Ashton's other child and Christmas-friendly ballet, Les Patineurs. This is from much earlier in his career (1937), and evokes a lost world of lovely manners, subtle games and gracious mishaps. It's Ashton at his most aristocratic.

It is essentially a series of dances on a skating theme, with lots of pretty sliding, spinning and almost slipping over.

Some of the opening night cast performed a little too vigorously, when what you want is Fred Astaire ease.

Many of the dancers also looked unaccustomed to Ashton's style, which they will be. I don't think any of the cast have danced Les Patineurs before. However, the sets and costumes create a sparkling winter wonderland of snow and ice, and if the mood is a little twee by today's standards, there's nothing twee about the steps, which are ferociously difficult.

Ashton's gracious exterior always hid a steely core.

• In repertory until 8 January. Information 020 7304 4000.