Imagine the city you thought you knew, then picture it the same but different. That is what happened when the Greenwich and Docklands festival took over Canary Wharf for a day with a series of free performances that reclaimed a part of London normally devoted to making money. Security guards stood by, looking faintly bemused at all the giggling; it may not have done much for the country's GDP, but it added immeasurably to its happiness.
The best pieces had subversive fun with the location: Nina Rajarani's witty, Indian-inspired dance show Quick! depicted men in suits running out of time on the Reuters Plaza. (That's the spot by the tube with lamp-post clocks that turns everyone passing into scurrying White Rabbits.) Maxine Doyle and Felix Barrett of Punchdrunk transformed Jubilee Park into a Garden of Eden with cornflowers poking up through the grass. Sitting on picnic rugs scoffing lemon cakes, the audience watched a latter-day Adam and Eve having a delightful lovers' tiff.
Some of this work is still very much in development. Upswing's aerial performance Unwound has a long way to go in terms of both skill and concept, but Catalan company Sol Picó were on hand with a show whose energy and professionalism was never in doubt, even if its sexual politics were sometimes a tad dodgy.
· Quick! is at Winchester Hat Fair on Saturday, and Stockton International festival, August 1-5. Upswing is at Winchester Hat Fair this Saturday.
