Alvin Ailey, Sadler's Wells, London

Limb-wrenching worship at the church of Alvin

When Alvin Ailey died in 1989, like all great founder-choreographers, he left not only a legend but a problem. How was his celebrated dance company to remain true to his original vision, yet alive to the present and future? Ailey's legacy amounts to much more than his 79 dance works. As long ago as 1958 he envisioned a fully integrated black American culture and set about making it a vibrant reality on stage. One measure of his success is that Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater now tours the world as an ambassador for American culture, not just African-American. Revelations, the company's signature piece created by Ailey in 1960, has almost certainly been seen by more people than any other modern dance in history.

All of which leaves a delicate balancing act for the company's present intendant, Judith Jamison. What's more, it's 10 years since the company was last in Britain and, at a packed-out Sadler's Wells, expectations were feverishly high. Jamison's answer was to fill two-thirds of each programme with non-Ailey choreography, but round off both with the iconic showstopper Revelations.

The snag was that the trial-and-error of the new paled next to the tried-by-fire of the old. Ailey still beams truth like a beacon. At least two of the newer works try to replicate some of his spiritual fervour. In Ronald K Brown's Grace – beset by too-clever-by-half lighting and a fug of dry ice – West African dance idioms, hip-hop and club are overlaid with a curious suggestion of novice monks undergoing initiation, which contrasts comically but unintentionally with the glistening, impressively undulating flesh on display.

Jamison's own work Divining, while adopting more obviously rootsy tribal moves and cladding the dancers in tea towels, opens against a projection of (divine?) light shining through a church window. The result is strong on raw vigour, including a spectacular riff of 15 bodies line-dancing across a jungle-patterned floor, but the religious angle looks like an afterthought.

More successful was Alonzo King's Following the Subtle Current Upstream, which dropped any pretence of a subtext in favour of excitingly speeded-up ballet moves skewed in the manner of William Forsythe. I enjoyed the hurtling athleticism and the way the piece showcased the Ailey dancers' precision-honed skills, but ultimately the spatter-effect of ideas and lack of development failed to leave a single durable image.

Ditto a work from 1986 by Ulysses Dove. Bad Blood plays on the classic men vs women, can't live together, can't live apart scenario, backed by the breathy philosophy of Laurie Anderson songs. Three overtly sexy women in white Lycra backless catsuits take turns to hurl themselves at their men in increasingly ingenious and limb-wrenching ways. But as in so much else shown across the two programmes, the body beautiful took precedence over real content. These are dances that shout "look at me" but then have little to say.

By contrast, what Ailey achieved in Revelations, inspired by his memories of Sunday services in his native Texas, is an integrity of form and feeling. Strong, simple body shapes – a phalanx of raised palms in "I Been 'Buked", the yearning, heavens-reaching balances in the duet "Fix Me Jesus" – sear themselves into the imagination like a branding iron. And who can resist the emotional pull of "Wade In the Water"?, a traditional southern baptism so simply staged that it's a near-abstract expression of liberation.

But Ailey does the job just as well without the buzz of religion. A surprise highlight of Programme II was the duet Ailey originally made for the statuesque Jamison and compact Mikhail Baryshnikov. Pas de Duke is a cheeky jazz version of formalised ballet courtship – he in white satin, she in black, he setting up what he thinks is a technical challenge, she (the gorgeous Linda Fisher-Harrell) answering back with the sassiest feminine quips you ever saw.

j.gilbert@independent.co.uk