A modern-day Astaire

Whenever I watch Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, there is always a moment when the two of them are dancing in unison, cheek-to-cheek, step-to-step. Each time I find myself inching nearer and nearer the screen, trying to put my finger on that extra something that makes Fred Astaire "great", while Ginger Rogers remains merely "very good".

I have never isolated it, and an evening with Akram Khan and his company produces the same feeling of frustration. As a dancer Khan has "it" - that something extra, that something special.

His new programme opens with Loose in Flight, a wonderfully synthesised meeting of East and West. Khan is trained in Khatak - North Indian classical dancing - and the percussive feet and spiralling turns of the former, built on a traditional formal structure, are overlaid onto lyrical contemporary modes. Khan's rapid shifts of balance, drops, turns and falls always teeter on the edge of gravity, yet are always perfectly centred and focused.

Related Rocks, to Magnus Lindberg's score for the London Sinfonietta, returns, although sadly this time, to a tape of the music. Khan and his company of five produce undulating lines, spirals unrolling, as they pick up on Lindberg's patterns to settle, shift, and mutate into new patterns. Complex shapes become simplified over time, as rocks, pounded by the sea, are worn down to their essence.

Rush is the least achieved piece on show. Khan has been inspired by paragliders in freefall. However, gliders by definition all operate separately from each other, and the three dancers in Rush cannot make a unity of this work of isolation. The music is equally remote from any communication with the audience - imagine standing on a runway at Heathrow, with fire alarms going off at intervals. Even Khan, with his technical skills, can make nothing of this.

But there is no question that Akram Khan is one of the most exciting choreographers on the contemporary scene, and his failures are worth a dozen successes by lesser talents.

With him, performance and choreography fuse to produce beautiful works of theatre.