Guangdong was China's first modern dance troupe to emerge from the Cultural Revolution; even now its policy of assimilating international dance trends to a modern Chinese sensibility is all but unique in the country. Surprisingly, Guangdong's first visit to the UK reveals very little about what the style and politics of a new Chinese choreography might be. The company's mixed programme (including work by UK choreographers Becky Edmunds and Charlie Morrissey) feels like a sampler of last century's international fashions - post-Butoh, postmodern, post-expressionist.

It would have been a disappointment had the dancers themselves not proved so exceptional. Outstandingly supple and strong technicians, they have a mesmerising command over their movements. In A Tacit Assembly, Edmunds and Morrissey milk this quality, coaxing the dancers through meditative solos that pause in vertiginously stretched balances. The dancers' bodies remain poised, as if docile to the choreographers' demands, yet their lively faces stare quizzically at each other in a comical assertion of their own independence.

In Folding, created by company member Shen Wei, the dancers assume a deliberate remoteness, as if posing as an alien life form. Their exposed flesh is powdered white, and in Butoh style they drift in exquisite slow motion. This trance state is punctuated by brief displays of physical origami, in which the dancers form and deform their limbs into sculpted poses. Beautiful, but very slow.

The choreographed struggle between gravity and flight in Xing Liang's I Want to Fly veers close to emotional and muscular cliche, but soloist Li Hong Jun gives it a breathtaking urgency. He is gifted with a flawless instinct for line, and in his remarkable body the solo becomes a riveting image of the basic drama of dance -raw energy in dialogue with pure form.

At the Playhouse, Newcastle (0191-230 5151), tonight, then touring.