Evenings like this are usually something of a beauty contest. A handful of choreographers showcase new work and one of them emerges a clear winner. In the case of this Royal Ballet programme, there was no doubt who took the crown.

Liam Scarlett, who joined the Royal in 2005, has already notched up a promising reputation. His Of Mozart was the most ambitious and successful work in this patchy evening. A choreographic discourse on Mozart's Piano Concerto No 23 (played by the Southbank Sinfonia, with Robert Clark on the piano), it revealed a breadth of language and imagination that his fellow choreographers lacked. Scarlett sets his dance for a cast of eight, and his remarkable achievement is to make each one of them look distinctive even as the movements perfectly capture the arc of Mozart's lithe rhythms. There is much finesse in the ensemble patterning and a feisty vigour to a central duet for Laura Morera and Bennet Gartside. Throughout the demeanour is strictly classical, but with a smiling, modern twist.

If there was a runner-up it would have to be Jonathan Watkins for his Stop Me When I'm Stuck. Another one who started making dances at school, Watkins is inspired by the fascinating rhythm and atmosphere in Graham Fitkin's score. There are five dancers and one or two convincing moments when the choreography's intention - to show how easily we become trapped in our own perspective - becomes clear. I particularly enjoyed Lauren Cuthbertson in the guise of head girl.

For the rest, Ernst Meisner's What If ... is a sporty duet for Sergei Polunin and Romany Pajdak, slight but fun. Viacheslav Samodurov contributed b, a pas de deux for Sarah Lamb and Ivan Putrov that was strangely impassive despite hints of darkness and strife. Vanessa Fenton's Monument (to music by Bach and Senking), also for eight dancers, bristled with images of death and catastrophe but was entirely unmemorable.

Matjash Mrozewski, a Canadian whose previous work for the Covent Garden main stage left me bemused, offered a feeble duet entitled Agitator. Isabel McMeekan and Thomas Whitehead were the two lost souls stranded in its troubled landscape, forced to endure Owen Belton's dead music. Still, as variable as this evening was, it gave some fine dancers the chance to test their mettle in works created for them, an opportunity all too rare at Covent Garden.

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