Rambert Dance Company, Sadler's Wells, London

Some ideas shouldn't get past the drawing board. Rambert's new Eternal Light is horrifyingly full of them. Toucans and sparkly crosses jostle with flares and new-agey uplift. The dancers, poor things, stay taut and alert in a sea of waffle.

The choreography is by Mark Baldwin, Rambert's artistic director. It's a large-scale work, with a commissioned score by Howard Goodall that requires a choir and soloists as well as the musicians of London Musici. A requiem, it uses a short version of the Latin Mass, adding English poems on the theme of mourning, and is a straightforward, sometimes sentimental, setting in the English choral tradition. It doesn't deserve what happens to it on stage.

As Goodall cuts between Latin and English, Baldwin's choreography moves between abstract dances and costumed set pieces. Dancers wrestle with billowing cloaks, striking poses that suggest suffering. Most of the steps are muscular and overwrought, trying to express everything, from the fear of loss to the environment. At least, I assume that's where the toucan came in.

Weighed down by wings and headdress, the toucan dancer totters on, flapping and suffering. The dying-swan motions suggest that it's meant to be a doomed, noble figure. The effect is not tragic. How could it be, with those scrappy wings and that big, cheerful beak?

Michael Howells' designs bring on the worst errors of judgement, in particular, the setting of "In Flanders fields...". As dancers writhe and pose in red lighting, rows of crosses are lowered from above. Sparkly crosses, outlined in Swarovski crystals. It's the First World War as cabaret act.

Rambert's hapless dancers must know this is a train wreck, but they dance with total commitment. Steps are strongly shaped, with clean line and impressive seriousness. They can't save it, but they go down fighting.

The evening ends with Garry Stewart's Infinity, another mystical dud, with falling petals and martial-arts posing. Between them, a small oasis in a large desert, came Two Solos as a Tribute to Norman Morrice, choreographed by Mikaela Polley and Alexander Whitley (Morrice, who died earlier this year, directed both Rambert and the Royal Ballet). Polley's solo, danced by Miguel Altunaga to Vaughan Williams, is fluid and vigorous. Whitley, dancing his own steps to music by Karen Khachaturian, is spikier, darting through quick rhythms and angular poses. Both are direct, simple and well danced.

Touring to 6 June (www.rambert.org.uk )