The Bolshoi are back in London and anyone who's seen the headlines will know that the company's recent history reads like the decline and fall of a famous dynasty. The last couple of decades have, the story goes, witnessed the company's creativity stagnate from years of chronic inbreeding. Its performing standards have fallen under the weight of free-loading relatives and hangers on, and in the ballet company particularly, the long rule of Yuri Grigorovich has divided the ranks into bloody factions.

Now however, under the reforming direction of Vladimir Vasiliev (with Alexei Fadeyechev in charge of ballet) the Bolshoi is determined to present a scrubbed and competitive image to the world. The ballet is eager to regain ground from its rival the Kirov, so it was surely a mistake to open the season with La Bayadere as this is a ballet which the Kirov perform uniquely well.

Petipa's Bayadere is mid-19th century ballet at its dottiest and most sublime. The choreography runs the gamut from exquisite, near-abstract classicism to gaudy music hall exotica, with some 20th century oddities tacked on. But while the Kirov's pacy, elegant staging allows us to be entranced by the ballet's period charm, the Bolshoi version (staged by Grigorovich) looks leaden and over-stuffed. The problem isn't just poor production, it's also that few of the new Bolshoi dancers seem to believe in the plot. Tuesday's Solor, Andrei Uvarov had only two emotions, snappish bossiness and hangdog despair, while Inna Petrova portrayed hard-hearted Gamzatti with a harridan grin. Only Nadezhda Gracheva acted with the intensity we used to expect from the Bolshoi, her Nikiya an old fashioned but truthful mix of girlishness and spiritual grandeur.

Gracheva's dancing also offered a rare glimpse of Russian poetry, her flamboyantly arched line radiating from a still centre and revealing a musical delicacy to match the exquisite string playing of the Bolshoi orchestra. The other dancers looked more disciplined than on recent visits. But their rigour seems to have come at the expense of expression and the new style has a clipped angularity which takes the edge off even the hallucinatory beauty of the Shades Act.

There are six more ballets to come and visiting companies often take time to settle into a long season. The forced quality of the dancing may come from a company trying too hard to impress, and the jury remains out on Vasiliev's reforms.