Raw passion restrained

Choreography is inevitable in flamenco shows, but it's the free-style solos that set your heart a-racing. Little compares to the sight of musicians, dancers, and singers clapping and chanting, and cheering each other as they improv their steps with exuberance and flair.

It captures what we love about flamenco, its authenticity and spontaneity, and the sense of it not having been messed around with before it gets to the stage.

Sara Baras opened the third flamenco festival in as many years at Sadler's Wells on Friday night, and it was the free-form finale that roused the spirits.

Despite her incomparable technique, her seriousness, and her theatrical good taste, Baras and her troupe looked best when they loosened up. The men grabbed their coat tails with emphatic bravura, raising dust as they stamped the stage, while the women swirled their skirts with semaphoric allure.

It was both more funny and more serious than the faultlessly arranged dances, and like all things in short supply, it left you eager for more.

Sabores is the third piece in Baras's trilogy of shows best described as flamenco recitals. It features 12 musical numbers of pure dance, with two singers, four musicians and 12 dancers including Baras herself and two guest artists, José Serrano and Luis Ortega.

The show is a tight display, with Baras a mistress of stage craft. Her emotions and dancing are powerful but controlled, with nothing remotely rag-taggity about her style, no frayed flair, no gutsy rawness. Instead we see a perfectly presented show of faultless flamenco, with stable upper bodies and fearsome footwork.

The latter is awesome to behold, with Baras pounding the stage like a whirlwind-powered Hovercraft.

Her corps are almost as able, the women smoothly feminine, and the men sharp and robust, while the two guest dancers were pleasingly rough-cut by Baras standards.

However, the show feels too managed, too safe. Baras gives us little sense of our passions, the panic of love and the heart's whirling furies. If she would only cut herself some slack, her show would be terrifying.

Tonight only. Information: 0870 737 7737.

Flamenco Festival London: Ballet Flamenco Sara Baras: Sabores