Even the most sports-phobic dance fan is likely to have been watching the gymnastics during London 2012. The aerial choreography, the gravity-defying pirouettes and balances are as close to dance as any event in the Olympics. Some of the world's most famous dancers, Sylvie Guillem and Sergei Polunin included, started out as gymnastic prodigies; many of today's Olympians have trained with ballet masters and mistresses in order to hone their elegance of phrasing and line. Russian gymnast Victoria Komova, despite coming away with a silver in the all-around competition last week, has been acclaimed as the most dancerly of this year's female competitors – and it's easy to see why.

At the start of her routine she uses her eyes and head with an almost balletic authority: there's a voluptuous musicality to her first barreling sequence of somersaults midair (0.10) and to the coiling stretch work on the floor (0.35). Komova is impressive to watch. Yet as someone with only a superficial knowledge of the sport, I was relieved to read commentary on the internet confirming my sense that the levels of technical ability required of today's gymnasts, astounding though they are, come at the expense of fluency of phrasing, and grace.

Back in 1972 it was apparently a different world. Olga Korbut is exceptional, of course, but the way she dances through her entire routine in this clip makes it expressive as well as awesome. In the opening seconds, the line of her arabesque beautifully prefigures the flared arch of the leap that follows: the control with which she comes out of her first diagonal of airborne somersaults allows her to channel the impetus of her movement up through her torso and down into the delicate detailing of her hands (0.17). The sequence of chasses and jetes into which Korbut then moves may not be technically extreme, but the height and spring of her jump sustain the physical intensity as well as the flow of the choreography and I love the way that she uses her head at 0.26, tilting it back to create a moment of lift and suspension before she moves down on to the floor.

Korbut's sense of her own body line and shape and her relationship to the space around her is also supremely assured – the way she suspends that backward flip, hanging for a perfect nano-second in the air.

By contrast, Komova is required to cram so many "difficulty" scoring moves into her routine that she lacks the time and space to let her body sing.

I may be completely wrong here but the toughness of today's routines also seems to have upped the quotient of distracting head tossing and prancing that goes on in the corners of the mat. Presumably these "asides" are essential for the competitors to catch their breath and rev their energy up for the next big sequence.

Gabby Douglas won hearts and points by making a perky cheerleading virtue of them. But to my non-specialist's eye they make these brilliant, powerful, beautiful young women look like show ponies. I much prefer the male routines, which do without them, though maybe that's because men have the extra muscle to power through their routines without them.

Kohei Uchimura, going for gold, phrases through those fabulously vaulting flips and turns with no punctuation at all.