Alexandra Ansanelli and Valeri Hristov in the Royal Ballet s Nutcracker in London. Last week I revisited two such versions, very different from each other, in London and Paris. Peter Wright s has been danced by the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden since 1984; Rudolf Nureyev s has been danced by the Paris Opera Ballet since 1985.

Nureyev first staged the ballet 40 years ago this winter for the Royal Swedish Ballet and Covent Garden; it lasted nine years in London (where it was the first Nutcracker I saw, 31 years ago). Nureyev did not turn The Nutcracker into just any other love story. His version, which features some appalling rearrangement of the music in both acts, is a dirty-old-man fantasy in reverse.

The little-girl heroine, Clara, dreams that her little Nutcracker hero is really the old family friend Drosselmeyer; she becomes his adult ballerina consort, and he becomes rejuvenated as her knight in shining white armor (well, tights). In the most deliberately dark episode, she is visited by human-size bats who, Drosselmeyer reveals, are actually her relatives. I have spent 31 years trying not to think what the snowflakes may mean.

Nureyev was always inclined to overchoreograph, cramming steps onto every beat, a tendency only increased when he restaged ballets. His Paris dances look less like choreography than like workouts, seeming to tell dancers, Do these so that you too can keep up with dancers more youthful and gifted than you.