The Royal Ballet says it is inviting a new audience to experience the thrill of live ballet by taking Romeo and Juliet to the gigantic O2. Beware what you wish for. It’s the thrill of the live audience I’m starting with before I get onto the splendid show. Sweet packets rustled behind my ear, fish and chips were wolfed nearby, pizza shared, drinks slurped. People were still entering in droves 30 minutes after the start, obstructing the view of Juliet’s first scene. People were late back for Act II, triumphantly bringing the beers and crisps in, better late than never.

There were apparently unanimous whoops of joy inside the Royal Ballet this morning, even as brows were wrinkling perplexedly outside, when it was announced that the likeable No 2, administrative director Kevin O’Hare, will succeed director Dame Monica Mason next year. The smiling insider is to head a team involving two of the world’s leading choreographers, Christopher Wheeldon and Wayne McGregor, which holds out the promise of a gold-plated twin-track creative approach uniting both classical and modern. With imminent budget cuts looming, this might be more of a gilt-plated reality, but still, if the personalities gel and Wheeldon and McGregor create several new works for London, the Royal Ballet will be the envy of the world.

If an excess of enthusiasm troubles you, look away now. Because this is less a review, more a love letter. Alina Cojocaru has been astonishing audiences for more than a dozen years. Regular ballet-goers attend her performances expecting to be thrilled. I went expecting to be thrilled. What I didn’t expect was to have a ballet I have been watching for 30-odd years suddenly seem new.

Programming a mixed bill is a very delicate art, and what seems like an interesting mix to one person might appear to be an entirely random series of choices to another. The Royal’s new triple is the perfect example. The music – Stravinsky, Poulenc, Stravinsky – might suggest an air of 1920s Parisian je ne sais quoi in theory, but in practice, that’s not how things unfold, with an odd combination of Ashton at his spiky chic-est, followed by Glen Tetley’s quasi-religious memorial meditation, and topped by Macmillan at his – well, more of that anon.

Current affairs can be an on-trend choreographer's nemesis. In the new triple bill at the Royal Ballet last night, you could watch a new video-game war-ballet by Wayne McGregor, while blotting out thoughts of the Taliban suicide massacre in yesterday’s headlines, and Christopher Wheeldon’s DGV, with its modish wrecked train set, while trying to forget that yesterday expensive retribution was demanded of Network Rail for the Potter's Bar train crash.

Manon, Manon, the little minx. Here she comes again - for the 223rd time, last night - and like the legendary ladies of her trade, scrubs up fresh and newly captivating, as if she’d only just skipped off the carriage from the convent.

The Royal Opera House's 2011-12 season takes place under the shadow of a 15 per cent cut in public funding and the looming London Olympics. There are 12 ballet bills and 18 opera nights, including one new opera and two new short ballets.

Reports of ballet’s death are greatly exaggerated, but I’m not equally sanguine about the craft of choreography. Having sat dumbstruck through the four limping dogs masquerading as finalists in The Place’s prize “for dance” [sic] on Tuesday, I found myself amazed, simply amazed, all over again at the fecundity and sheer knowledge of Ashton’s Cinderella, having its umpteenth revival last night at the Royal Ballet.

Forty years ago, my childhood self wasn't in the least bored by Frederick Ashton's balletic animal magic: I saw it twice in cinemas large and small and asked for the soundtrack LP of John Lanchbery's masterly Victorian-potpourri ballet score for my birthday. If I get a bit restless now, it might be because I want more, which is less, in  terms of pace; the best stories here are all in the first half, the picnic finale is interminable and no doubt there's something odd about the mice, the frog, the pigs and the fox ending up together and all the same size. Otherwise it's good to see it again and remember the names behind the masks.