Royal Ballet, Royal Opera House, London

A flawed tribute to greatness

The Royal Ballet's tribute to Rudolf Nureyev begins wonderfully and ends very nicely, but in the middle it falls prey to one of the most massive miscalculations ever committed in dance history. Too many hands seem to have been determined to be involved; too many memories intent on asserting their angle on the Nureyev phenomenon.

Inevitably, Nureyev represented different things to different people. Some of these things may be wide of the mark, but Irek Mukhamedov's contribution is an apt prologue. First, he recites a snatch from Pushkin's Eugene Onegin dealing with exile; then he performs his own evocation of the young Nureyev's first ever London appearance, in a solo created for him by Frederick Ashton, to Scriabin's Poème tragique. Nureyev had made his entry wrapped in a dramatically voluminous cloak; and so does Mukhamedov, before throwing himself into a suitably furious whirl of leaps and brooding Byronic poses. It is one Tartar's passionate homage to another.

George Balanchine's Apollo, a ballet closely associated with Nureyev, follows, and Carlos Acosta is stunning in the title role. It is not just that, like Nureyev, he has clearly thought about the meaning of each movement; it is also that his deliberate geometries have all of Nureyev's blazing solar authority, even while he establishes his own special nobility. If Darcey Bussell had achieved sharper phrasing as Terpsichore, the whole performance would have been well-nigh perfect.

Nureyev's staging of Raymonda's third act is 19th-century classicism fused with pseudo-Hungarian exuberance to make a satisfyingly opulent finale. The ensemble dancing was fine and Marianela Nunez luxuriated beautifully in the expansive texture of the third variation. As male lead, Jonathan Cope pulled through – just about – which obligingly allowed Sylvie Guillem to dominate through her spectacular lines and ballerina glamour.

Guillem probably also looked wonderful earlier, in her signature role from Forsythe's In the middle, somewhat elevated, which Nureyev commissioned when he was director of the Paris Opera Ballet. Her partner, the POB's utterly handsome Laurent Hilaire, probably looked wonderful, too. But they barely caught my eyes. Why? Because all the way through, Nureyev's moving image was projected in the background – film of him dancing, film of him talking, film of photographs of him, the camera scanning the frozen moment.

And so it went on. Alina Cojocaru and Johan Kobborg's lovely light steps from La Sylphide were jarringly overwhelmed by mostly unrelated celluloid footage. Laurent Hilaire's contemporary-dance solo, Surge, by Pierre Darde, also lost the contest, as did Tamara Rojo, Ivan Putrov and Edward Watson in an extract from MacMillan's Images of Love. Only Tetsuya Kumakawa, dancing Nureyev's celebrated Le Corsaire party piece, escaped the impediment. So he could look doubly pleased: to be returning to his former home company, and to have the stage all to himself, to whizz and float as though touching the floor was an unpleasant obligation.

We may be living in an image-filled world, but have we really acquired a new ability to handle clashing images simultaneously? The exercise, assembled by Guillem and her film-maker friend Françoise Ha Van Kern, was irritating and counterproductive. Faced with a choice between looking at the dancers on stage and Rudolf Nureyev's larger-than-life image, personality and talent, he won every time.

Until 26 April (020-7304 4000)