Random Dance: Polar Sequences, The Place, London

Not many choreographers use their companies to show pieces by others. Wayne McGregor, celebrating 10 years of his Random Dance company, has invited two others to share a triple bill at The Place. There is an overall title, Polar Sequences, but the individual pieces are unnamed.

The company looks sleek and strong throughout. McGregor goes in for extreme positions, splits and high-kicked legs, but he likes a full-bodied way of moving. His dancers take everything he throws at them and never look strained.

Shobana Jeyasingh responds to this, giving the dancers plenty of bending, reaching steps. But she doesn't give them much in the way of contrast. They stretch through positions - a wriggle here, a tilt there - and then do it all again. Like Andy Cowton's sound collage of electronic hums, it's all process and it just keeps going.

Rui Horta's dance theatre piece is slight but fun. A couple clutch each other, run and fall. A second woman joins them, and they dance in circles or break into solos. But it's hard to pay attention, because there's also a guy cooking a stir-fry at the back of the stage. As the dancers collapse, panting, he washes, chops and adds vegetables and grates ginger. His timing is lovely: soy sauce is poured with a flourish. Savoury smells drift across the front row. When the food is ready, the chef doles it out to the other dancers, and launches into his own flailing solo, chanting ingredients. I hope somebody ate the rest of the food.

In his own piece, McGregor tries out different kinds of music: a Purcell aria, crashing electronic music, a thumping piece of Marilyn Manson. They don't all suit him. In the aria the dancers dance duets, but their romantic gestures are awkwardly exaggerated. It's not quite camp or comic, just odd. Should we read this as emotion, or not? And does McGregor really mean to ignore the music? His steps cut across the phrasing - not pointedly, but as if he hadn't noticed it.

He's more at home with the industrial crash of the next section. The contortions are extreme, legs split and bodies bent double. Only the dancers' strength, that richness of movement, keeps it from violence.

Like Jeyasingh, McGregor doesn't have much rhythm. His dancers change attack by speeding up or slowing down. They don't play with or even follow a beat. In the last section, McGregor carefully follows Marilyn Manson's blunt, repetitive phrases. It's the only time he really seems to pay attention. That pounding beat gives a kick to McGregor's spiky steps, but I wish he'd listen to something less simplistic.