By Gerald Dowler

For the third year running, Henry Roche, devoted company pianist for The Royal Ballet, has brought young dancing friends and musical colleagues together to raise money for a small charity, Ashanti Development, which works in Ghana to help local communities. At the Royal College of Music’s delightful Britten Theatre, he put together this year a toothsome evening of small-scale instrumental and dance works, not the least of which was a personal revival by the ballet’s owner, Jelko Yuresha, of Anton Dolin’s famous Pas de Quatre. Before that, however, were several dance vignettes, starting with a rare glimpse of the Bride’s solo from Frederick Ashton’s war-time ballet The Wise Virgins; a short excerpt focusing mainly on plastique and an almost oriental placing of hands and wrists, it was serenely danced by Romany Pajdak.