DANCE / Sorry, I just don't catch their drift

THERE MAY have been snow on the ground last week, but at The Place Theatre it was Spring Loaded. This eighth annual festival of new dance was launched on Tuesday by Small Axe, founded in 1992 by the former Rambert dancers Ben Craft and Gary Lambert. Their piece is titled Cold Ground Drifting, which immediately made me suspicious. The idea of 'drifting' lacks rigour and could hide a multitude of choreographic sins. Movement giving you problems? Never mind. Just drift, and all your problems will go away.

The piece is about urban anomie (that old theme); for the project Craft and Lambert brought in Catherine Price, also formerly of Rambert, and Tristan Borrer, an Australian. The four make up a company of beautiful and imaginative dancers who have stirred their collective talents into a pot to see what they could cook up. Quite a lot, as it turns out. They have created a tall, commanding, reach-for-the-sky style. But it is the sort of dance that speaks only to itself: the language is gorgeous but stops short of actually saying anything. I take that back. There is a sentence that is discernible. It says: 'This way to the Eighties'.

Price bends to the side, slips her arm over her head, coaxing the space to accommodate her lovely shapes. You expect her to continue but she straightens up and walks off. Dancers swing on chains suspended from the roof, deftly demonstrating control over body and space. They jump down, and that's it. Nothing is sewn together, leaving the impression that the piece is more a class exercise in improvisation technique than a performance.

The effect of drifting around a problem is most apparent when the men go offstage, leaving Price lying on her back to the sound of pouring rain. Is she a homeless person being drenched? Or did the dancers simply need a quick break, but not know how else to get one?

Small Axe dancers are gifted, and have won a prize for Cold Ground Drifting. But I suspect it is developing into one of those love 'em or hate 'em companies.

Two impressive dancers, Jeremy James and Jo Chandler, try their hand at choreography. They present and perform five short works, including a solo each. James's solo, Scag, is double-sided: both wiry and razor-sharp, while Chandler's Memories is dark and brooding. Each is a private reflection typical of their respective styles and stage personalities. All their pieces are pure dance with no other pretensions. James and Chandler are grappling towards a grammar of their own, but seem stuck for the moment on the same phrases and loose constructions.

'Spring Loaded': The Place Theatre, WC1, 071-387 0031, to 7 May.