Dance: Nederlands Dans Theater 2, Sadler's Wells, LondonHofesh Schechter, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London

The film Logan's Run, a Seventies sci-fi classic, was set in a 23rd-century world of total pleasure. The downside was that everyone was eliminated when they reached the age of 30. The bar is set rather lower at NDT2, the youth squad of Nederlands Dans Theater. There your number is up at 23. Most of the company's 15 members are rather younger than that, which gives their increasingly frequent UK tours a rather giddy slant, almost everyone on stage being new to it.

Youth's fearlessness and energy are at a premium in NDT's take on contemporary dance, which is distinctively European, ballet-based but spikier and gawkier. Salient features include rude splits and stuck-out bottoms, with just two speeds on the joystick: whiplash fast or snaky slow. It's material that relies on performers and audiences having rather short memories, too. For long-in-the-tooth spectators, the antics in Jiri Kylian's Sleepless are soporifically familiar: disembodied body parts that slide about from behind a screen, the girl who creeps up on her own shadow and appears to swallow herself, the bare-chested boys (nicely six-packed, mind you) who lug rigid mannequin girls about like window dressers in Top Shop. Note to the managements of the eight regional theatres where NDT2 is headed: go for the youth vote; forget the over-23s.

For originality, you have to wait for Sleight of Hand, commissioned for this tour from the choreographic duo Lightfoot/Leon. Paul Lightfoot is a Brit who has spent his entire career in Holland (otherwise you'd know about him). Sol Leon is a Spanish-born creative dynamo and Lightfoot's wife. Their joint work is never less than multi-layered and beautifully crafted, and this one is big on mystery, too. Just don't ask me to say what it's about. Picture a Gormenghast interior, two 15ft-tall characters in widow's weeds, normal-sized characters in undertakers' garb who dash about gnashing their teeth, and a trance-inducing Philip Glass soundtrack. As a study in gothic extremity it is wholly successful. As virtuosic dance it is impressive. With a smidgen more plot, I dare say it would have been more satisfying all round.

Let us draw a polite veil over the central mishap of the evening: a composite offering from the Israeli Ohad Naharin. To my mind it does the art form no favours to string together disparate bits of earlier works to make a new one. Spit (the title of the piece, yawn) is all posturing and vogue-ish anarchy, filched from previous Naharin rants. A stylish opening - a wall of bodies rhythmically shaking fists and undulating chests to Middle Eastern street music - segues into a duet which ends in a woman squatting and farting over her partner's face. I kid you not.

Cue a male-bonding episode of extreme fatuousness. When five boys in Beckham sarongs perform a ring-a-ring-o'roses around a tin bucket, pray how should a self-respecting critic arrange her face?

For male-bonding rituals with insights, and minus the skirts, check out another Israeli choreographer, Hofesh Schechter. Hardly anyone knew his name until the managements of the Place, the South Bank and Sadler's Wells decided to remedy things. Between them, they have come up with a plan they call an Escalator, a fast-track schedule of performances of the same double bill, starting with a small venue (the Place), moving up to medium scale (the QEH), and ending, triumphantly they hope, at Sadler's Wells in September.

The major flaw in this idea is that, faced with the question "Would you like to see a work in progress?", most of us would answer "No thanks, I'd rather see something finished and fabulous". That said, last week's mid-point showing was highly enjoyable, not least for its gut-thumping live account of the music (some of it written and performed by Schechter), emanating from a high platform cut into the set.

Uprising is a piece for seven feral-looking males, who storm about in packs as if bent on bagging an Asbo, twitch and jerk in ways that suggest factory labour, and scamper on their knuckles like menacing chimps. Schechter cleverly knits these motifs into a densely textured fabric, creating pattern and rhythm on both a micro and a macro scale.

The newer In Your Rooms, which comes with an even more terrific score by the fiddler Nell Catchpole, takes as its theme the difficulty of making true personal connections in a busy-busy world. It shares the thrilling troglodyte thump of the earlier piece, but needs a narrower focus if it's to say anything.

jenny.gilbert@independent.co.uk

Nederlands Dans Theater 2, Hall for Cornwall, Truro (01872 262466) Tue & Wed; The Lowry, Salford (0870 111 2000) Fri & Sat