Fearless steps of change

Sir Kenneth MacMillan said he was sick to death of fairytales, and you sort of know what he meant. You can only take so many swans and sprites, and the pretty steps and tidy tears that go with them. "We have to challenge audiences who think ballet [is] light entertainment," wrote the great choreographer, who died 10 years ago this month. "A lot [are] stuck in an arrested emotional development at the time when they first saw Swan Lake."

MacMillan was as radical in his beliefs as he was skilled in his dance-making. Born in Dunfermline and raised in Great Yarmouth, he dragged classical ballet into the modern age. He put fear, sex and loathing on to the Covent Garden stage where he created his main works for the Royal Ballet, ruffling all sorts of feathers on the way. Out went the sylphs and fairies, in came flesh-and-blood characters, who were desperate and lonely and needy.

MacMillan was a master choreographer, but you would never know it from this exhibition. The problem is not one of emphasis or accuracy, but simply one of scale.

Compared with the space devoted to American singer and actor Paul Robeson, whose massive exhibition sits alongside, MacMillan looks like an also-ran. Hidden away in a tiny corner, there are just two costume displays, a few static panels of text and images, and some mobile panels that don't work.

True, there is some excellent stage design material, but only one complete maquette, and that, Barry Kay's model for Act I of Anastasia, is set to one side and easily missed.

Worse, the video clip of Romeo and Juliet, probably MacMillan's best known work, has Margot Fonteyn in the lead, a woman whose polite dancing was just the sort of thing he railed against. Far better to have shown a clip of Lynn Seymour, the dancer who was so important to MacMillan.

The modest scale is surely a funding issue, so all credit to Sarah Woodcock, the museum's dance expert, who has crammed much good stuff into the tiny space - Anthony Crickmay's photographs are stunning, while the early press snap of MacMillan in a local dance show is gold dust. However, you leave with the sense that the great man has not been given his due.

Kenneth MacMillan, The Outsider is showing at the Theatre Museum until mid-2003. Information: 020 7943 4700.