[1] Cranko choreographed the ballet for the dancers Richard Cragun, Birgit Keil, Marcia Haydée and Egon Madsen.
[1] In his biography on Cranko, dance critic John Percival described the ballet as one of his most successful works.
The four lead dancers appear in others' movements, but these appearances, according to Percival, are "not necessarily to play any very active part, but just to be there, evoking the real-life situation where each was a strongly defined individual with a life or his or her own, but all helped and sustained by their friendship.
"[2] He added that despite the technically demanding choreography, "the underlying idea helped the performers to give it a sense of being more than just display.
"[2] For The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet, E. Hollister Mathis-Masury wrote, "Cranko’s ballet was a complex mixture of boldness and hauntingly longing lyricism, interlaced with bursts of brio.
She added that the ballet is "a vehicle for the individual dancing style of each of his four main muses.