Magia De La Danza/Don Quixote, Sadler's Wells, London

They're close - but no cigar

In Magia de la Danza, the Ballet Nacional de Cuba has a timewarped air. The company is unified and well trained; at its best, the dancing is lively and appealing, technique matched with sunny charisma. Other performances are stodgy, technical displays that don't quite become dancing.

Cuban training has made dancers such as Carlos Acosta international stars. The parent company is popular, too: this programme was quickly arranged after last summer's successful visit. You can see why this company produces stars, but also why those stars might choose to leave. Magia de la Danza, a greatest-hits programme, barely ventures out of the 19th century. We see extracts from the six most famous classical ballets, all staged by the company's founder, Alicia Alonso, with a corps number and a duet each time.

The Don Quixote scene is the best. Cuban training is famously strong on jumps and turns, and this pas de deux is a firework display. Annette Delgado and Rómel Frómeta romp through it with a sense of ease and pleasure. Frómeta's jump is light and buoyant: he bounds up without strain, the line of his legs sharp and clean. Delgado is a lively heroine, spinning fouettés with insouciance, then pouncing on the footwork. Delgado and Frómeta are the stars of the evening, but the whole company look happy in it, from the strutting corps of bullfighters to Karelia Sánchez's skittish Mercedes.

Alonso has created a clear national style: you see the same qualities in very different dancers. Viengsay Valdés and Linnet González, as the Swan Queen and Sugar Plum, show the same care over footwork. Dancing petits battements serrés, in which one foot beats fast against the other, both are so clean and firm that you can hear the tiniest rattle. Yet those same feet look blurry in held positions, smudging the line of arabesques.

I was reminded of the Trocks: this company, like the New York drag ballet, harks back to an age of ballerina divas in blue eyeshadow. Several of these soloists seem to be following an interpretative grande-dame template. The evening's Aurora, Bárbara García, has the steps, but her gestures and facial expressions look second-hand. The corps, so happy in the peasant numbers of Don Q and Coppélia, are stilted in more classical numbers: they don't give these steps the stretch and rhythm of dancing. Cuba has wonderful dancers, but their context can be stifling.

With its full-length performance of Don Quixote, the Ballet Nacional de Cuba starts out at a disadvantage. There are good dancers here, overshadowed by shabby settings, dull production and odd casting. The dancing picks up as the evening continues, but Alonso's production leaves a messy impression.

The Cubans are the third company to bring a Don Quixote to Britain this summer after Balanchine's production at the Edinburgh Festival and the Bolshoi at Covent Garden. The Cubans can't match Russian lavishness.

The ballet, choreographed by Alonso after the 19th-century versions of Petipa and Gorsky, sidelines Don Quixote and focuses on Kitri, the village girl, and her lover, Basilio. It's a ballet full of technical fireworks, jumps and turns and hops on pointe.

Viengsay Valdés, the first-night Kitri, insists too much on technique, sometimes holding balances long past the music. But by the last act, she shows greater warmth, flirting her way through the scene in which Basilio tries to win her father round by striking poses of suicidal despair. Her Basilio, Joel Carreño, needs to be more assertive. His jumps and turns are secure, but sharper timing would give them greater flourish.

The first act is gloomy, let down by dowdy costumes and faded scenery. Energy levels rise with the Gypsy scene of the second act. Salvador Fernández may have dressed the Gypsies in lurid green, but Alonso sets them dancing. Hordes of Gypsy men bound through their entrechats, their jumps high, the beats clear and strong. The women jump and spin with lively energy.

Alonso tweaks the traditional text. Solos are redistributed in the vision scene, while Miguelángel Blanco's Don Quixote does an unusual amount of partnering. The Queen of the Dryads, Annette Delgado, gives a bright account of her solo, with springy jumps and fast footwork.

The dancers treat music in an offhand way: following it is optional. The Royal Ballet Sinfonia, conducted by Giovanni Duarte, played Minkus's score with warm tone.

Don Quixote is famous for its final pas de deux, a flashy showstopper. By that point, Valdés and Carreño had hit their stride. She still underlines her various feats, but adds an extra oomph.

To 10 September (08707 377 737)