Rudolf Nureyev Tribute, Royal Opera House, London<br></br>Tour de Force, Sadler's Wells, London

A dance to the music of sycophancy

When Monica Mason announced, only days into her directorship of the Royal Ballet, her plan to replace one of her predecessor's dodgier projects with a tribute to Rudolf Nureyev, the hum of approval was deafening. In the 1970s and 1980s Nureyev had a major impact on the company as dance partner, producer, and, crucially, as its most inspirational star, and on the 10th anniversary of his death it was time to honour that blazing talent.

A doddle, you might think, given the number of roles Nureyev personally illuminated and the fine productions he devised or inspired. But we all know that hero worship is the enemy of common sense, and alas the major part of the Nureyev tribute evening – a 36-minute compilation of extracts danced in front of film footage and giant stills of the artist – is a travesty of intelligent stagecraft.

Taste apart, it strains credibility that certain basic rules of theatre have been overlooked, the most obvious being that no audience can watch two shows at once. Faced with the choice of looking at dimly lit, beetle-sized dancers or giant moving images of one of the most hypnotically charismatic men the world has ever known, what do we do? We ogle the demi-god. The dancers may as well go home.

I might contentiously add a second rule for ballet directors, which is not to delegate to Sylvie Guillem and her Parisian fashion-pack cronies – the perpetrators of this particular horror. Guillem's judgement in all areas outside her own irreproachable dance performance has often been flawed, and so it proves again. How could she not see that the film backdrop belittled the dancers? How could she not see the sycophancy of those lingering shots of Nureyev's eyes and mouth? How could she think that showing a live extract of La Sylphide in front of a filmed rehearsal of Swan Lake was anything but ludicrous? Worse still, between the bouts of nausea brought on by trying to operate in bifocal, one could just discern a few very fine performances struggling for air.

Johan Kobborg and Alina Cojocaru's Sylphide duet had a delicacy and poise unmatched in my experience; Guillem herself seemed to be giving a definitive account of William Forsythe's In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated. Yet the turgid trio from MacMillan's Images of Love was possibly better off buried in shadow, and I was frankly thankful for any distraction from the long, demented solo by Pierre Darde that interminably fleshed out the mental problems of Nijinsky.

The only winner in this ill-conceived contest was Tetsuya Kumakawa who somehow contrived to dance his blink-and-you'll-miss-it Corsaire solo unhampered by the film. Emboldened by his superstar status in Japan, perhaps he had simply put his foot down. What a pity the other dancers didn't feel they had the clout to refuse the insult.

Yet the evening started so well. I love the idea of having Irek Mukhamedov read an extract from Pushkin in Russian, an apt passage all about the poet's longing for his homeland vying with his longing to leave and be free. And the loosely imagined solo Mukhamedov had devised – a guesswork homage to the piece Ashton made for Nureyev's first London appearance – was hugely heartfelt, even if it did rather irrelevantly pinch bits from Spartacus.

Balanchine's Apollo – not a role I first associate with Nureyev – found a blazing interpreter in Carlos Acosta. At the most basic and carnal level, it's hard to imagine any man looking more convincingly male or godlike in white tights and that odd little Grecian sash. Yet Acosta also finds a fine balance between the subtle drama and heroic gesture in this seminal ballet. And his duet with Darcey Bussell's Terpsichore nicely catches the sexy, even slightly fetishist quality of Balanchine's choreography.

The closer, too, is a triumph, with the whole company on exuberant form in Act III of Nureyev's gorgeously plush production of Petipa's Raymonda. Sylvie Guillem was made for the grand ballerina role: who would dare ignore those imperious little handclaps? What paramour could resist the languorous exotic drag of her pointework? On stage, there's no one can touch her. Just keep her away from directing, that's all.

English National Ballet, making an unaccustomed stop at Sadler's Wells withTour de Force, had a bit of a patchy time of it too. High hopes riding on the back of Christopher Hampson's recent choreographic triumphs failed to materialise in Trapeze, his new work for the company. The music is Prokofiev-by-the-yard (I longed for it to end) and Hampson's idea of setting the central duet on a circus trapeze fatally saps the work of dynamism and drive. Patrick Lewis's piece Manoeuvre is livelier, but milks the circus theme so hard it's tiresome.

Two shorter pieces lift the evening. Cathy Marston's sextet Facing Viv takes a daringly low-key approach, analysing the tangled relationship of T S Eliot and the woman who became his wife. Its complexities, I felt, probably tell better on more intimate stages than that of Sadler's Wells. Nonetheless, it held me transfixed from murky beginning to open-end.

But in Wayne McGregor's 2 Human ENB has itself a showstopper. Hard to tell whether it was McGregor's extraordinarily detailed and polyglot dance language that made it so gripping, or the fizzing performances by Thomas Edur and a transformed Agnes Oaks, the Estonian ice-queen turned foxy lady in a puff of black ostrich fluff.

j.gilbert@independent.co.uk

Nureyev Tribute: ROH, London WC2 (020 7304 4000), in rep to 26 April. 'Tour de Force': see Choice