Robin Howard Foundation, The Place London  

Robin Howard was by far the most valuable benefactor of dance in the second half of the 20th century, because he contributed brilliant and generous ideas, as well as huge sums of money. Not only to dance, either; music and the visual arts benefited too. How right, then, that he should be remembered in the theatre he founded, with a programme by five choreographers who were helped by the foundation set up in his name.

Two of them, sadly, have already followed Howard into the grave; in Jeremy James's case, at far too young an age. We should have been able to enjoy many more works displaying the exuberant fun and fancy of My Big Pants. Ten dancers now share, jubilantly, the roles that were originally performed by just four, and the sustained inventiveness of the movement makes you wonder how the first team ever survived its pell-mell demands.

We know how the late Jane Dudley managed with her own solo, Harmonica Breakdown, because the film shown this week (made by choreographer and ex-dancer Darshan Singh Bhuller, with Dudley's son Tom Hurwitz) records not only Sheron Wray dancing it in 1995 and the veteran Dudley teaching her the role, but still photographs of Dudley dancing it in the 1930s, and her own account of making it, as part of an attempt to improve life for others. And that's something that Dudley certainly did for dancers and spectators in her long, later career with Howard at The Place.

Charles Linehan, another choreographer who is represented here, might have made his Santa Pod more interesting if he had followed Dudley's example of letting music help to sustain the action. The duet that he made for Ioana Popovici, small and slight, and gradually establishing dominance over hulking Florin Feroiu, never really built on its occasional inspirations.

Fin Walker had music written and played by Ben Park on a fancy electric piano with Richard Pryce, acoustic bass, to support her own solo, Moment to Moment. She made herself look cute and twee, compared with the serious woman that other choreographers have found in her; numberless tiny jumps, repeated hand gestures, frequent still poses.

Much the best of the new works was a long extract from Henri Oguike's Front Line, to Shostakovich's Quartet in E flat. The musicians were ConTempo 4tet, sitting across the back of the stage. They gave the score a fierce life, but Oguike's dances went even further in abrupt changes of mood and manner. The five dancers engaged in strong stampings to the side, grabbed violently at each other, walked with quiet determination to contrast with swift transitions, falls and stasis. Fascinating, and brilliantly done; catch it on Oguike's forthcoming tour.

It's just too bad that the wonderful recent makeover of The Place so much improved front-of-house and backstage facilities, but left such poor sight lines in the theatre (exactly the same error as at Covent Garden). A tip to choreographers: if you want your dancers to be seen properly, don't put them down at the front of the stage.