The National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica is expert at working a crowd. Even though few of its members have a professionally glossy technique, and some of its choreographic material is ragged and naive, the company has an instinct for audience rapport that many ensembles can only dream of. At the launch of its UK tour, a packed and cheering Queen Elizabeth Hall was all but dancing in the aisles.
Since this is the NDTC's first visit in 15 years, a lot of the audience greeted the performers as though they were long-lost family. Sitting in the middle of this collective embrace made locating a critical response difficult. Tribute, choreographed by Eduardo Rivero-Walker, was a prime example. Set to a medley of Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff songs, its narrative of struggle and affirmation contained glimmers of genuinely powerful dance theatre - the starkly silhouetted slave chain of the opening, for instance, which fragmented into phrases of finely sculpted defiance. The dancers were fiercely committed and it was exhilarating to revisit these reggae classics, but the language of transparent emotion to which Rivero-Walker aspired was often a bombastic muddle. At best it looked cliched and at worst amateur, especially when the choreography forced the dancers to technical levels they couldn't comfortably sustain. Too often their bodies faltered just when the dance needed them to triumph.
The company looked weakest when it strained hardest to conform to mainstream dance styles. Clive Thompson's Vision aimed for transcendence through a neo-classical adage that left his dancers looking blank and ill at ease. Arlene Richards's Side by Side celebrated sisterhood in a duet that ladled coy ardour over a girl gymnast's routine.
Yet when the dancers were grounded in a more Caribbean vernacular, they suddenly looked far sharper - distinctively regional rather than parochial. Rex Nettleford, the company's artistic director, showed wisdom and wit not only in his fusion of modern dance moves with local idioms but also in his handling of the dancers as an ensemble. Never wrong-footing their abilities, steadily stoking up the choreography's energy with alternating patterns and rhythms, Nettleford presented his company's talents and personalities to maximum effect.
NDTC's band of musicians and singers are also performers of considerable charm. For Nettleford's final piece, Gerrehbenta, they took to the stage alongside the dancers - and the blast from the auditorium was huge.
At the Lyceum, Sheffield (0114-249 6000), tonight and tomorrow, then touring to Nottingham, Birmingham and Canterbury.
