Point of contention: MUSIC/ DANCE PJ Harvey/ Mark Bruce QEH, London

Before we go any further, I should perhaps make an embarrassing confession: the last pop group I saw in concert was almost certainly the Buzzcocks (original line-up). Hence my qualifications for judging Polly Jean Harvey and John Parish's contributions to Dance Hall at Louse Point at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on Thursday are a little sketchy. No matter, I was there to see Mark Bruce's dancers - that was the plan anyway.

The collaboration came about after Mark Bruce used some PJ Harvey music for an earlier show Love Sick. Harvey approved, and approached him with the proposal that some of her forthcoming material might be suitable for a joint venture. The result has been touring to packed houses. Bruce's five dancers share the stage with Harvey, the composer John Parish and three other musicians including the Captain Beefheart Magic Band veteran Eric Drew Feldman whose keyboard talents were criminally underexploited. The opening number, a dirge for three guitars, is accompanied by a duet between David Hughes and a supple redhead in a shortie cheongsam and blue knickers (Valentina Formenti).

Not knowing the words to the songs, it's hard to know if they had any bearing on the dancers' doings. I do know that they responded to Harvey's outpourings by running round and round their half of the stage in a clockwise direction - are people really still doing this? The dancers' most significant relationship seemed to be with the floor, which they hit with disappointing regularity. The music isn't undanceable - they just weren't dancing to it. Bruce has assembled good dancers with strong pedigrees (their collected cvs read like a Who's Who of contemporary dance) but hasn't succeeded in giving them something interesting to do and is currently relying too heavily on stock movements and exchanges.

It may simply have been the novelty of it, but I found it an effort to concentrate on Bruce's contribution to the festivities. The dancers were interrupting my view of the mesmerising Polly Jean. Bone-thin, encased in a velvet sheathe dress and sporting diamante slingbacks to die for, she has a remarkable voice that can range from a whisper to a scream - in the same phrase, a gentle drone of misery suddenly explodes into a shrill tirade. When she prowls about the stage with her frock hitched up over her knees singing "City of No Sun", there is no incentive to watch the dancers.

Dance Hall at Louse Point is part of the Royal Festival Hall's laudable initiative to find more adventurous ways of presenting contemporary dance. Trust me, putting musicians on stage is not the answer. Thursday's gig may have been conceived as a collaboration but it doesn't seem to produce a unified work of art; instead it's a contest that the musicians are winning. Music is a visual as well as an aural pleasure and placed on stage it can be an overwhelming distraction - which is presumably why the orchestra pit was invented.

Touring: Sheffield Crucible 10, 11 Feb (0114 276 0621); Newcastle Playhouse 17-19 Feb (0191-230 5151); Oxford Playhouse 21 Feb (01865 798600)