American Ballet Theatre, Theatre du Chatelet, Paris

Everyone knows that ballet dancers are gluttons for corporal punishment. It goes with the territory. But to expect two dozen girls, hot off a transatlantic flight, to perform a succession of identical arabesques penchées one by one down a ramp may be a punishment too far, even for one of the world's toughest ballet companies.

American Ballet Theatre has been in Paris this last week, next stop London - its first visit in 15 years. Three programmes aim to show the breadth of the company's work, from the company's own stagings of the Petipa classics to 20th-century greats by Mark Morris, Twyla Tharp and Antony Tudor. Your critic hopped on a Eurostar to catch the opening night at the Chatelet in the confident hope of making a recommendation for the London run. This is, after all, one of America's big three, among the most venerated dance troupes in the world.

And to be fair, the hallucinatory opening of "The Kingdom of the Shades", with its file of ghostly girls descending from the Himalayas, was largely competent. It was when all 24 converged on the flat that the jetlag told. Ports de bras flailed, knees wobbled and the sum effect, far from suggesting a single form multiplied in a hall of mirrors, only drew your eye to cracks in the picture. And things hardly improved with the entrance of Paloma Herrera, a Nikiya whose dour expression and lacklustre turns made you think maybe nobody warned her about the andouillette on the lunch menu.

It didn't help that this extract from Act II of La Bayadère was given out of context, without the colourful preamble that explains why Nikiya's moody warrior lover has shut himself away with his opium pipe to dream of girls in veils. While it's true that Act II was once the only bit of La Bayadère known outside Russia, most audiences are now familiar with the glorious ludicrousness of the complete ballet, thanks to stagings by Natalia Makarova for American Ballet Theatre and the Royal Ballet, and a rather superior version by Rudolf Nureyev for Paris Opera Ballet. Talk about taking coals to Newcastle.

The one redeeming feature in this performance is the blaze of energy that is Angel Corella. Perhaps as the only man in this flagging number he felt it incumbent on himself to add some pep, but the volcanic fury of his solos seem to come from another story. The performance is brilliant without a doubt - it's virtuoso style in the Baryshnikov mould, and the Formula One oomph is thrilling. But Corella's effect on rest of the cast is like a speeding car on pedestrians, flashing by without so much as making eye contact.

The company looks more integrated and at ease in Dark Elegies, created by Antony Tudor for Rambert, but restaged so soon after for American Ballet Theatre that they feel it's really theirs. Set to Mahler's Songs on the Death of Children, it's an unusually mordant subject for dance. Its costumes are drab, its style spare. Yet the skill and tenderness with which Tudor - and in turn these self-effacing dancers - shows a community coming to terms with grief, first with anger, then with resignation and gradual acceptance, makes it ultimately uplifting.

But the piece the Chatelet audience had come to see was Fancy Free, the early Jerome Robbins hit, which with its sassy Broadway blend of ballet and jazz style, has become something of a calling card for American Ballet Theatre. Everyone knows the story and the Bernstein score - either from the musical On The Town or the Gene Kelly/Frank Sinatra film. Three sailors are out on the pull in New York City. They meet two girls in a bar. The guys show off, fall out, fight, and the girls go home.

Ethan Stiefel is marvellously loose-limbed as the goofy one. Jose Manuel Carreno is stupendously athletic as he bounces off tables and chairs. But for all its fun and virtuosity this is a tricky ballet to pull off at the end of a programme. The sexual politics have dated, and the evening ends not with a bang but a whimper. It is, as the French would say, "une soirée ratée". A bit of a non-event all round.

jenny.gilbert@independent.co.uk

American Ballet Theatre performs three mixed programmes at Sadler's Wells (0870 737 7737) Wed to 18 February