There were huge cheers as the curtain came down, and rarely have they felt so poignant. Thomas Edur and Agnes Oaks usually receive the dignified applause befitting the Swan Lakes and Sleeping Beauties they generally dance, but on Friday they were bravoed and horrayed in almost wild style after their London debut of Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon.

Edur, normally all restraint, looked glassy eyed, while she smiled the saddest of smiles, knowing perhaps that their chance to dance MacMillan’s great ballet together had come too late. For most of their 20-year partnership the husband and wife team have danced pretty boggo Nutcrackers. Now, as their careers come to a close (she retires at the end of the season), they showed they were capable of much more.

Oaks was especially good as the beautiful young Manon. She’s long been pegged as a dancer of mono emotions and balletic formality, yet her Manon coolly eyes the gemstones while wrapping her innocent-seeming slenderness around the highest provider. The only reservations are that Oaks plays Manon’s remorse a little too early), and her overwrought make-up in Act III (she should look hollow-eyed, not like a raccoon).

Some aspects of the performance were less good. Mia Stensgaard’s costume designs make everyone look like sugared almonds rather than the rotting fruit of MacMillan’s original. The corps also need better coaching (they’re meant to be courtesans, not cartoon ducks), and Jane Haworth’s Madame was woeful — the character is not a pantomime dame.

This aside, it’s good that English National Ballet are dancing Manon. The company’s artistic director Wayne Eagling, who as a young dancer was the second cast in MacMillan’s 1974 original, persuaded the choreographer’s estate to let ENB have it, meaning his work will be seen outside London.

Until 11 January. Information: 08700 40 2000, www.ballet.org.uk.