Carlos Acosta is everywhere this month. The Cuban-born star has a show at Sadler's Wells, his autobiography, an extraordinary rags-to-glory story is published today, and he's dancing Romeo and Juliet at The Royal Ballet next week.

Shame, then, that he didn't look all there for the Royal's season-opening La Bayadère on Saturday night.

Acosta seemed tired, with hesitant acting, unfinished gestures, and far from perfect transitional steps - that magic dust that links one leap to the next and turns them to poetry.

Admittedly, La Bayadère is the ballerina's ballet, and Acosta's dancing is still pretty special by everyone else's standards. But Acosta isn't everyone else. He's one of the best dancers of his generation with more talent than the rest put together. It's as if after all the work, all the planning, and all the publicity to build his career and break through to a wider audience, this dazzling dancer is too tired to dance.

Happily, all else was up to scratch. The sets and costumes in this lightly spiced Indian hokum are gorgeous, and the orchestra do wonders with the dire Minkus score. Almost perfect was the famous Kingdom of the Shades scene, the "white act" where 24 identical bayadères, jilted maidens who've died of love, process onto the stage, each a ghostly reminder of Solor's betrayal. He has sworn a vow of eternal love to Nikiya, a low-born temple dancer (a bayadère), but is bewitched by the ravishing Gamzatti, a bejewelled high-born oozing money and sex.

Marianela Nuñez's Gamzatti stole the show, her dancing quick and sharp, her manner all diamond-hard glamour. She flaunts her conquest of Solor to the distraught Nikiya, a kitten-soft Tamara Rojo who is forced to dance at their wedding.

Rojo is is one of the few dancers who can appear bitten by a snake (a none-too-convincing prop) and not look silly. Indeed, it's a sign of the collective skill of The Royal Ballet that it can get through a ballet with rubbish props. The "sacred flame", the tiger, and that snake in the basket of flowers are the stuff of panto.

• In repertory until 27 October. Information: 020 7304 4000. www.roh.org.uk.