A glass slipper with legs.

The Royal Ballet returned to New York City, with a repertory spanning fifty years and produced by three very different choreographers. But it looked its best in Cinderella, Ashton's classic first presented here nearly a half-century ago.

How vividly I recall the Royal Ballet's first American season! In addition to Margot Fonteyn in The Sleeping Beauty, it gave us Frederick Ashton's Cinderella with Moira Shearer. Now, nearly half a century later, Cinderella again brought luster to the company's New York engagement, June 18-27, at the Metropolitan Opera House as a principal attraction of Lincoln Center Festival 97.

Ashton's 1948 treatment of the oft-told tale soars beyond sumptuous production values and boldly playful mime to entrance the audience with the aptness of its dance imagination. The divertissements that filter through the action are actually ballets in miniature. They have the delicacy and the Proustian attention to detail that mark Ashton's style at its most true.

The role of Cinderella, despite its substantial technical demands, which include an entrance down the palace staircase entirely on pointe, does not really require the theatrical presence of a prima ballerina. I remember finding Shearer more affecting than Fonteyn, and here I found Miyako Yoshida more so than Darcey Bussell. The third Cinderella, Leanne Benjamin, has yet to achieve a voice of her own.

Yoshida has vulnerability with an underpinning of spunk that blossoms into radiance as she exchanges hearth for ballroom. Beyond that she has a deceptive, almost hummingbird strength. Witness her whir of bourrees when she meets the beggar.

Ashton gives the Prince a dimension beyond that of a mere partner and Stuart Cassidy rose to the challenge. He did not merely enter his ballroom to await Cinderella's arrival. Instead, he bounded in and watched eagerly for her. Their initial pas de deux was peppered with exits and entrances, as though he were playfully pursuing her from room to room.

The secondary characters, notably Ashley Page and Philip Mosley as the Step-Sisters and Luke Heydon as the Father, were performed with unassuming honesty. The only role that seemed out of sync was the Jester. Tetsuya Kumakawa bolted through the endless pirouettes and sauts with a more assured attack than did Justin Meissner in the same role, but in general ballet jesters are like gnats at the beach.

There is a jester in Kenneth MacMillan's Prince of the Pagodas, too. Many other familiar presences peopled this frenetic three-act journey to Benjamin Britten's unyielding score. In 1957 John Cranko created a tepid Prince. MacMillan's 1989 effort has already been seen in this country, to chilly response. I wonder why it was brought again.

MacMillan mistakes activity for action, nervous clutter for dramatic development. As in many of his ballets, the intimate moments were the most telling. In her second-act pas de deux with Jonathan Cope, Bussell covered the stage with the heroic ease that is distinctively hers, and then scaled down to a single, deeply felt gesture of tenderness as she embraced the salamander who would become a prince through her love. Although Cope is an effective partner, Bussell, at this point in her development, is ready for a partner with the temperament of a Nureyev.

When American companies present mixed bills they often give them fanciful titles like "Happily Ever After," "Dynamic Directions," or "An Evening with Mr. B." The Royal Ballet's omnibus offering was modestly called "Ravel Mixed Program," and mixed it was.

Ashton was represented by Daphnis and Chloe' (1951) and La Valse (1958). Created seven years after Balanchine's La Valse, Ashton's seemed dated. Both ballets end with a turning circle surrounded by contrasting action. Ashton's simply goes around; Balanchine's becomes a metaphor for death.

Daphnis and Chloe returned in a new production designed by Martyn Bainbridge. With its white walls reminiscent of Mykonos and its shimmering illusion of the Mediterranean, the ballet looked both radiant and timeless. It was a joy to revisit the frieze-inspired shepherd dances; and the boyish solo for Daphnis with his shepherd's crook was uniquely suited to Bruce Sansom's unaffected style.

Christopher Wheeldon is considered one of today's promising young choreographers. His Pavane pour une Infante Defunte ("Pavane for a Dead Princess," 1996) is a pas de deux with but a single decisive gesture. A man, clad in the anonymous black of a noh stagehand, snatches off a woman's white satin skirt, leaving her in flowing satin trousers. Their relationship never becomes clear. There is a hint of cool eroticism in Bob Crowley's design, an outsized golden calla lily reminiscent of Georgia O'Keeffe.

MacMillan's La Fin du Jour ("The End of the Day," 1979) captures the atmosphere of the 1930s somewhat the way Bronislava Nijinska's Les Biches mirrored the twenties. At the outset, the dancers, in their amusing period playclothes, twitch in place like Dr. Coppelius's mannequins. They launch into a series of athletic-looking variations and conclude with a romp for the men in pastel satin evening clothes. Ian Spurling's art deco production contributes much to the atmosphere.

At present, the Royal Ballet women have a clearer profile than do the men. Perhaps it's because the men tend to transfer too much of the studio onto the stage. They aren't bold enough, and during this visit they had to cope with a preponderance of two-dimensional roles. Even Cinderella, with all its subtleties, is not a model of profundity. How refreshing it would be, the next time the Royal pays us a visit, to welcome Ashton's Enigma Variations, A Month in the Country, La Fille Mal Gardee, The Dream, Romeo and Juliet, and Symphonic Variations. Well, why not an Ashton festival? It could be called "America Loves Ashton.