Black Grace, New Works 05 at the Maidment Theatre Studio

With six works performed in quickfire succession, the four dancers of the Black Grace company work hard in this display of their choreographic talents.

Beads of sweat glisten. You can hear the breath pumping behind exploding muscles. It is an intimate occasion in the cosy studio confines.

Black Grace do intimate with panache and style. Primarily an exercise in professional development, which gives the dancers an opportunity to stretch their choreographic muscles, the resulting performance is a mixed bag and a load of fun.

This year, Daniel Cooper's work Man is the one to shine. It is a lyrical and touching exploration of the father/son relationship, beautifully conceived and performed by Sam Fuataga and Jeremy Poi. This work alone makes the exercise more than worthwhile.

Poi is an extraordinary dancer, but his creation Zipoinksch, based on slapstick and clowning, is an interesting deviation from the dance of the physical body.

There is a lot of exuberant running around - think Three Stooges - but most of the movement is focused in the faces of his three performers, Fuataga, Sean MacDonald and Cooper. It works a treat in the small theatre space.

Fuataga's Stars on Sunday develops an interesting and sometimes hilarious movement vocabulary, based on childhood memories of his church's congregation.

MacDonald looks at relationships, between two and three, and two again, in his well-formed and crisp 3 Storeys.

An ensemble work, Scrabble, is a spirited celebration of individual expression and style.

The programme begins with an old work, in fact Black Grace's first work, Handgames from Relentless. It is gloriously male, fantastically physical and performed sitting in chairs.

Artistic director Neil Ieremia joins his dancers for Handgames and at the end performs again in a preview solo from his new work in progress, Open Letter, about love.

To finish, the company's two trainees, Abby Crowther and Desiree Westerlund, perform a duet from the same work. It all looks stunning.

The personal introduction began 10 years ago when time and funds both ran out and there was no programme for the first New Works. The tradition has stuck and become a Black Grace trademark.