The point about Resolution, the Place's annual showcase for novice choreographers, is that each of its mixed programmes should feel like a random sampling of work. Any one performance will not give audiences a coherent overview of new directions in British dance, nor a startling glimpse of new talent. The shows are more likely to suggest the ways in which young choreographers are picking up on the trends that dominate the high-profile activity at the top of their profession.
Creative Dance Limited are two dancers who, having trained in classical and contemporary Asian forms, are now interested in bending their inherited language to the shapes and rhythms of other vocabularies. In Femme Fatale, Sangeeta Ghosh and Kalithasan Chandrasegaram progress through a series of duets in which the delicate articulations of Indian dance are filtered through aggressive hip-hop, African dance and old-fashioned disco. Thematically, the piece puts the pair in competition for the role of the desired love object (and unfortunately encourages performing narcissism). Choreographically, it looks like an enthusiastic, if rather stolid, checklist of already available options.
White Smoke is a company whose language is based in butoh, that minimalist fever chart of sensation and emotion that emerged from Japan over 40 years ago. For the first half of Air Around, choreographer Fumi Tomioka has little to add to the form as she arranges herself and three other dancers in sculptural but inert-looking phrases. Then the piece starts to stir itself as languid, gently startled movements flicker from one dancer to another. You feel the energy of the choreography like hot currents of air.
Possibly the most original offering is Sally Up Steps, a dance-speech monologue by Louise Barrett. This semi-confessional form has already been mastered by performers such as Yael Flexer. But the personal nature of the material and Barrett's engagingly open-hearted presentation make it her own. Her intense, occasionally whimsical recollection of her early relationship with her father segues into a choreographed study of flight and refuge, ending on a moment of real charm.
· Until February 15. Box office: 020-7387 0031.
