Nederlands Dans Theater, Sadler's Wells, London

Luscious sensations and mounting mayhem

When people say they don't "get" contemporary dance, perhaps they should try NDT. The full house that greeted Nederlands Dans Theater's long-awaited Sadler's Wells debut seemed to wise up pretty fast. Faced with knitting their brows over Jiri Kylian's cryptic programme notes, or simply lapping up the sensations offered by the opening piece – luscious bare breasts, lit by naked flame – there was no contest.

Could this be what Susan Sontag was thinking of when she called for a "theatre of the senses"? You could spend a whole day discussing what Kylian's Bella Figura might be saying, but "meaning" is only part of the story. Take the motif of a woman sitting gazing at her own face, her hands as the mirror. It's an image of self-absorption, and a nod to the title, but it turns to virtuoso spectacle as the woman is whirled by her partner inches above the floor, as if in some invisible office chair.

The big red crinolines worn by both sexes might be part of an argument about gender, or artifice, or historical context, but they're gorgeous and grand and sensual in themselves, like overblown poppies in a painting. And the stage conceits Kylian likes to play with – dancers supporting the safety curtain in their arms, or a lone figure squashed into a dark box of light – all contrive to leave spectators more aware of the fragility of flesh, the weightiness of matter, the denseness of dark. Kylian is such a master of sensory allusion that you almost forget to register the sleek, Formula One engineering of the NDT dancers themselves. Technically they are matchless.

One reason the company hasn't been in London for years is that no stage was equipped for its work, created as it is in NDT's own state-of-the-art theatre in The Hague. But Sadler's Wells's Ian Albery was astute enough to consult the Dutch model when refurbishing Sadler's Wells, and NDT's first visit reveals another of the Wells's new amenities: pouring rain. Paul Lightfoot named his latest work Speak For Yourself in reference to the fugue JS Bach contrived around the letters of his name, but he might equally have called it Wet, Wetter, Wettest. As the dancers' bright counterpoint peters out into silence, a billowing curtain of fine spray is unleashed, slowly drenching the dancers and imposing its own soft, melancholy music. The closing image is of a girl slipping from her partner's embrace and vanishing under the downpour.

Ravel's Bolero has beckoned to many dance-makers in its 73 years, but never, to my knowledge, inspired them to wild comedy. Johan Inger (soon to take the helm at Sweden's in-your-face Cullberg Ballet) reinterprets its maddening monotony as mounting mayhem.

A chance encounter between a bored housewife and a passing office worker inspires a breakneck hide-and-seek fantasy around, on and over 30ft of garden fence, which at one point flattens into a platform for a dozen overcoated hoofers. This kind of raw vigour and spontaneous fun is par for the course with NDT. Heartening to think that's what the season's sole sponsor, W&S Transition, wants to be known for, too.

j.gilbert@independent.co.uk