What a difference live music makes. For a choreographer such as Henri Oguike, whose very raison d’être is the relationship between dance and music, the use of recorded music must occasionally be anathema. Yet such are the economics of running a small independentdance troupe on a tight budget.

The lack of a live score is especially detrimental to Little Red, one of two Oguike world premieres unveiled at Laban at the start of a major UK tour. Two of Vivaldi’s violin concertos blare out of speakers, sounding harsh and woefully inadequate. It’s a shame because the choreography is so busy setting up a dialogue between the music’s order and the dance’s seeming disorder.

This is one of Oguike’s more unexpected pieces, caricatured and melodramatic, a wild work for six red-clad women and the two brave men who stumble into their midst. With a red stripe traversing the stage, it becomes the battle line between male and female. Preening like supermodels, posturing like drama queens, these vainglorious women are not to be messed with. Little Red is full of their contorted poses and shows of strength, but it also explores their vulnerability through subdued bouts of melancholy. Perhaps in this war of the sexes there are truly no victors.

Green in Blue, the other premiere, benefits enormously from the presence on stage of the saxophonist Iain Ballamy, who also composed the score, and three other musicians. This is Oguike’s first foray into jazz and his response is dance that directly reflects the constant rebranding in Ballamy’s moody music. Here rhythm is the obsession, although Oguike never quite finds the imaginative glue to hold it all together in the choreography. The mosteffective moment is one of starkcontrast: as the music emits a hail of percussive shots, the dancers barely move on Guy Hoare’s darkened stage. Oguike’s strength has always been his ability to find such bold theatrical colour within the pure abstraction of his dance.

The two older works on the Laban programme didn’t quite hit the mark.Expression Lines, a solo danced by the supremely elegant Oguike, has music by Ali Farka Toure but lighting so dark it becomes a fetish. Who can tell what choreography is actually going on? Tiger Dancing, a scurry of lithe movements inspired by Blake’s famous poem, was scuppered by the poor reproduction of Steve Martland’s recorded score.

Tour continues at the Cambridge Arts Theatre

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