A street-dance troupe from Sweden with a show called Bounce doesn't exactly conjure up the mean streets of New York where hip-hop culture started. As soon as the dancers hit the stage you spot a scrubbed, eager quality about some of them that's far more suggestive of stage school than inner-city ghetto. Yet while Bounce is really a family show - mixing parent-friendly disco and lindy hop amid the breakdancing, and staging boisterously comic gags to further soften the dancers' image - it does convincingly showcase some of the sharpest moves of the street genre.
The production carries a persuasive whiff of urban outfitting. The bare bricks and cold draughts of the Roundhouse provide the perfect location; it's made even more authentic by Lez Brotherston's stage design, with its tangle of iron steps, abrasive lights and wire-mesh fencing. The dancers wear an assortment of trainers and hoodies, and my kids alerted me to several desirably current tracks within the score.
As an ensemble the performers don't venture far beyond the standard jerky, hunkered-down style of breaking and popping, but the show does allow individuals to display some breathtaking star turns. Two tiny breakdancers execute multiple spins on their heads, elbows, backs - even on a skateboard - with the manic speed of cartoon characters. A tapper challenges a rapper to a wild and witty duel of rhythm and a guy who starts out sketching a few ballet steps (causing predictable derision among the other dancers) proves his street cred by segueing from pirouette to faultless breakdance in a second.
These highlights keep the audience sharp and keen but there are too many passages where Bounce loses its nerve and tries to route itself back into more mundane show-dance territory. It strives for a bit of sex (the women's belly-dancing routine) and a bit of art (a slow-motion reprise of the standard moves), and in doing so strikes a dull, even amateurish note. At its best Bounce gives us a classy, lively alternative to commercial dance theatre; at its worst it's a feeble apeing of the mainstream.
• Until June 10. Box office: 020-7316 4768.
