The relationship between the Alvin Ailey company and its public is a kind of communal love affair. The love-in began at the top of Tuesday’s decidedly mixed bill, the second of two programmes with which the troupe is touring Britain until October 5.

The American choreographer David Parsons’s Shining Star is a facile pop ballet set to the funky music of the 1970s band Earth, Wind & Fire. Four friendly couples support a central duo, Linda Celeste Sims and Glenn Allen Sims. Her impressive six-pack is bared above white shorts and tail-like skirt. The others are similarly dressed, like his and hers disco-club uniforms.

The piece is agreeable but skimpy. The Simses share a duet of sexualised romantic grace punctuated by stunt-like lifts, but the ensemble choreography is amorphous. At a quarter of an hour long, it stops abruptly before it has time to develop. Imagine arriving late to a party forced to break up too early. Yet the audience didn’t seem to mind.

The response was even more enthusiastic for Parsons’s Caught. This gob-smacking 1982 solo features one of the greatest gimmicks of contemporary dance. The shirtless Clifton Brown started off beneath pyramid-shaped overhead lights. Then the strobes kicked in, making him appear to float, fly and walk on air.

Reminiscin’, the artistic director Judith Jamison’s world premiere, loosely charts some sassy or vaguely emotional encounters between the habitués of an Edward Hopperesque bar. The soundtrack is a jukebox shuffle of songs by famous ladies (Sarah, Ella, Nina).

The engaging Brown stood out in the most interesting and sober duets, partnering Hope Boykin during a Diana Krall cover of Joni Mitchell’s A Case of You and Kirven J. Boyd to Roberta Flack’s rendition of Always. The tender ambiguities of the implied same-sex relationship segued into brotherly, then community, love. Although the dance lacked cohesion, the dancing was never less than spirited. That zeal spilled over into the finale, Ailey ’s classic gospel barnstormer Revelations.

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