Royal Ballet.

Mixed bills are notoriously difficult to sell in Britain. So it was a plucky Royal Ballet that opened its season with "White-Hot & Different," a program of two premieres, one company premiere, and a revival. It made for a long evening, and not necessarily one that will woo the newcomer to a mixed bill again.

The new works were created by two of the troupe's own young choreographers, Matthew Hart and William Tuckett, who faced the challenge of sharing the evening with two experienced master craftsmen, William Forsythe and Kenneth MacMillan. Both young men show great promise but can learn much from the prudent and perceptive use of steps and music seen elsewhere in the program.

The twenty-one-year-old Hart's Fanfare, to a commissioned score by Brian Elias, blends coordinated images of dance and music in waves of classical steps that surge with the music into stretching arabesques, jetes, and high lifts. A huge hanging canvas that looks, at first glance, like a smudged Monet Water Lilies dominates the stage. Six dancers wear speckled leotards and skullcaps. The leading couple, Zoltan Solymosi and Belinda Hatley, brought elegance and focus to this fast-moving ballet.

William Tuckett, who's twenty-four, has already made a reputation as a creator of enigmas. If This Is Still a Problem seems to be yet another. His music was Ravel's Piano Trio, which is worth listening to while one tries to unravel the deeper meanings onstage. Tuckett's choreography uses his dancers like a skyscape of fleeting clouds, massing then dispersing, sometimes rolling over the ground like swirling mists.

Costumes and sets designed by Andy Klunder are otherworldly: The women wear marbled, gray-blue flowing dresses with heads encased in (again) skullcaps; the men, not-always-flattering unitards. The set is three stark ramps. Like a high priestess, Lesley Collier made her stately entrance in a blaze of light down the central one. She was met by Jonathan Cope, who partnered her with caring attention but who went on to dance another pas de deux with William Trevitt. Then all danced together in a menage a trois. (Could the title refer to the differing pathways - the ramps - of sexual behavior?) The piece is overlong and loses sight of its aspirations as well as the audience's attention.

Which is something Herman Schmerman doesn't do. Forsythe's tongue-in-cheek ballet was deliciously danced by Sylvie Guillem and her fall guy, Adam Cooper. it lifted spirits and got the British balletgoers guffawing. (Guillem's diaphanous leotard seemed to inspire attention also.) The British backup team also deserves commendation for its timing and energetic, joyful performances: Deborah Bull, Benazir Hussein, Nicola Tranah, Tetsuya Kumakawa, and Michael Nunn.

MacMillan's Different Drummer is a somber and dramatic work created in 1984. It tells the disturbing tale of Woyzeck, a common soldier repeatedly abused and humiliated by his captain and deceived by his common-law wife, who, after stabbing her, finally drowns himself in a bathtub. Not the jolliest way to end an evening out!

MacMillan's genius for conveying the subtleties of stark realism in balletic form was brilliantly executed by Irek Mukhamedov, who goes from strength to strength with the Royal. Drummer did not require displays of bravura, but rather clear evocations of the pathos and inevitability of disaster. Mukhamedov had superb support from the whole cast, especially Viviana Durante as the wife, David Drew as the captain, and lain Webb as the anomalous doctor. The ballet made compelling viewing.