When the gym doesn't work out

Deborah Colker is often criticised for creating hollow, athletic dances that owe more to the gymnasium than to the arts. This is sort of true.

The Brazilian movement maker was once a volleyball player, a pretty good one by all accounts, and there's nothing she loves more than getting her dancers to use each other as human pommel horses and parallel bars.

However, the real problem is not that Colker is too gymnastic, but that she's not gymnastic enough.

Take Rota, a piece of 75 minutes, 60 of which are stale choreographic doodles, with slo-mo mime, goofy frolics and oops-I've-shown-my-pants-again dancing for the women. The soundscape is Pachelbel, with barking dogs, slamming doors, and club dub.

The backdrop reminds you of those paper dressmaking patterns women used to buy from haberdashers, although bus maps overlain on one another also spring to mind.

Either way, you forget most of it, and most of the second half as well. It was only in the final 15 minutes when the dancers take to a 30ft-high wheel that you got any sense of motion and pace, of fun and danger, and daring.

The wheel was brought centre stage, and the dancers leapt on it like you'd jump on to a red, Routemaster bus. Around and around, they clung to its spokes, and then they seemed to race about its hub, sometimes synchronising, sometimes flying freestyle like waltzing trapeze artists. They evoked the languorous back-and-forth of Fragonard's The Swing, and then the knockabout elan of skateboarders and BMX bike riders.

It's not new and it is a bit cheesy, but it's also fun to watch, and probably quite dangerous to perform. Maybe its short appearance is something to do with the insurance premiums.

Until Thursday. Information: 0845 120 7557

Deborah Colker Dance: Rota