A problem I find with small-scale performances in the round — or in the square, as it was in the adaptable space of the Linbury Studio, in the bowels of the Royal Opera House — is that one is tempted to scrutinise other members of the audience for their reactions. During a touring programme by the Bare Bones company, from Birmingham’s DanceXChange, my fellow watchers greeted each of the five short works on the bill with equal enthusiasm, though I felt — in the course of a lot of energy expended and the five dancers’ “personalities” thrust up close — that it was too many dips rather than a meal.

Kim Brandstrup’s Bounced Bach, with twiddly vocals by the Swingle Singers, is a surprise departure from his usual interest in characters and narrative. This is a twitchy, jiggy, rolly, bouncy dance for overgrown kids. I found it unappealing. Carol Brown’s Maybe, “a duet for a man and woman swallowed by space”, had words about wanting to go up in a rocket to live in zero gravity, and its recumbent shuffling movement slightly suggested space-walking. The San Franciscan Robert Moses contributed Misconsumption, to my mind embarrassingly hip- casual, faux-sexy, inchoate.

Frantic Assembly is the production name of the co-choreographers Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett. Their piece, Improper, is punchy, thumpy, clubby. It includes cheery chatter to the audience. “You’re definitely right,” I was brightly told right into my face, apropos of nothing, as I was trying to push my chair backwards out of range. This work was indeed frantic, to the point of mayhem, but the audience loved it. I can’t think why William Tuckett titled his dance Tautology, but I enjoyed this most, with its giddy swirlings and rollings for a cast in striped pyjamas, living out a dream, it seems, to piano music by Chopin — and that came as a relief.

At the award-winning, curvi- linear, rainbow-hued Laban, which beacons across bleak Deptford Creek, I caught up with Protein Dance’s touring production The Banquet, by the joint director- choreographers Bettina Strickler and Luca Silvestrini. Dick Bird’s clever set is a madly perspectived, odd-angled open house, with doors and cavities for constant comings and goings and character transformations. The themes are evolution, how we haven’t come as far as we might think, how our sophistication is a veneer over beastly instincts.

The lanky, bald, white-suited Richard Strange — “art/punk legend” — is the master of cere-monies at this weird gathering. “From goo to zoo, from zoo to you,” he sings. “From lobster to mobster, from dinosaur to Diana Ross.” The four dancers are slithery primeval things, loping apes and yelping dogs with their snouts in the soup, being taught to use a spoon. They are also social “types”, Tasha Gilmore especially funny as the well-heeled girl prone to hysterical laughter and ungainly upendings. Strange provides a commentary on a particularly mad coupling (“the female is now at her most volatile and dangerous”) in the reverential tones of David Attenborough. The Banquet is witty and surreal dance-theatre, constructed rather like a Pina Bausch work in miniature.

The Barbican (for Bite:04) hosted Moving Africa, a conspectus of modern “fusion” dance from three parts of that continent, and very different from folkloric extravaganzas in grass skirts. The Soweto-born solo dancer Vincent Mantsoe cuts a powerful figure in his piece, Barena (Chiefs), majestic in stillness, a tornado in fierce movement that blends anger and pride. He has such a nice face when he smiles, it’s a pity there’s so much grimacing to his act.

From Madagascar, Company Rary gave a work by Ariry Andriamoratsiresy, whose blend of styles includes t’ai chi. At first, nothing much happens, slowly, though the four dancers’ intense concentration was shared by a pin-drop-quiet audience. The music, for percussion and zither, was delightful, and the dance built up on, around and through a wooden frame like a two-tier bunk bed, used to suggest, inter alia, a bus and a boat. Charming.

To close, Salia ni Seydou, from Burkina Faso, danced Figninto (The Torn Eye), a dense piece about death, blindness, remembered friendships. Strong stuff, from a fine male trio, but at length — and it was very long — sinking under its own ponderousness.