Pacific Northwest Ballet, Sadler's Wells Theatre, London

A tumult of movement to match a cascade of sound: that is Fearful Symmetries, the work that provides the climax of Pacific Northwest Ballet's second London programme. Several choreographers have been drawn to John Adams's tempestuous score, but Peter Martins's approach suits the music particularly well. He mounted it for his own New York City Ballet in 1990, when the music was still quite new, and PNB first danced it last year.

The ballet is set for a cast of 23, all of them at full stretch; there are three featured couples (with Louise Nadeau and Batkhurel Bold outstanding), but everyone is given demanding solo work. Wearing shades of red, they hurtle across the stage in great leaps, or twist and turn with precipitate zest. The way they keep up the energy for a full half-hour is amazing. And the Royal Philharmonic (or "pit band", as one national paper quaintly renamed it) under Stewart Kershaw plays the demanding score with warmth as well as power.

Martins's ballet brings the programme to a fine close, and it opens equally well in quite a different mood with another masterwork from the NYCB stable, Divertimento #15 – Balanchine's cool, graceful dances set to Mozart (with Allan Dameron conducting this time). Brief, varied solos for five women and three men; a handsome series of gently fluent duets; an intricate minuet for eight supporting women: this shows that the PNB company can produce elegance as well as energy.

I was less convinced that they have the virtuosic brilliance for the classic pas de trois from Le Corsaire. Patricia Barker finds some grandeur for the ballerina role, but is a little too stern in manner, while Stanko Milov and Casey Herd did only intermittently well in the two men's solos.

Joining Corsaire to make up the middle part of the evening was Jardi Tancat, the earliest ballet of the nowadays ubiquitous choreographer Nacho Duato. I have to confess that I have never been able to see the reason for his popularity, and this example of his genre does nothing to convert me. To plaintive or sometimes rather raucous Catalan songs collected and recorded by Maria del Mar Bonet, three couples have a thoroughly miserable time, caused (a programme note tells us) by the barren nature of the land they hold. PNB's cast do it as well as any I have seen, especially Ariana Lallone and Alexandra Dickson, but they can hardly be expected to find lucidity in the piece's opacity.

Still, two-thirds of the evening was enjoyable, and that's better than many companies lately have been able to manage.