Where there’s yin, there’s yang, innit? Energy is balanced by spirit, movement by stillness; the real is countered by the illusory. And, in the case of Moon Water, a signature piece by Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan, the production’s extraordinary beauty is balanced by its excruciating tedium.

Moon Water was created by the company’s artistic director, Lin Hwai-min, in 1998, and began the company’s latest British tour at Sadler’s Wells. It has been here before, in 2002, as has the captivating Cursive trilogy, inspired by classic Chinese calligraphy (the dancers took classes to emulate its brush strokes’ energy). There’s more of Lin’s distilled and liquid movement in Moon Water, but it’s a less varied piece, which, for all its rapt grace, achieves less traction.

Pale figures occupy an ink-black space. Foamy white circles brush the dark floor like the gentlest snowdrift, partially reflected above in an angled mirror. Lin’s movement is based on t’ai chi, but the score is rooted in the West – selections from Bach’s Six Suites for Cello, on a rasping recording by Mischa Maisky. As the piece begins, a man sinks slowly to the floor in near darkness, then rises without visible effort. His crouch and sway perform the body’s breathing. It is exhalation made visible, occasionally cut by arms that wheel, then fold back into his torso.

Lin doesn’t demand classical ballet’s stop-and-stare poses. We might be watching a single extended movement, never rushed, never ceasing, in constant (if sometimes barely perceptible) motion. The dancers maintain incredible control of their speeds; they can slow movement to a murmur. Only the sheen of sweat betrays their concentration. Moves change even as they are made, as if borne away on water. Like a river, they’re always different, always the same.

Solo dancers are counterpoised against the ensemble, who form a shifting, hillocky landscape in the background. Their synchronicity doesn’t demand eye contact – at some moments, the ensemble seems to operate on one shared breath. The group sequences are like cloud-gazing: after a while, it’s surprising to realise how far they’ve moved without you noticing. Towards the end of the piece, water trickles over the stage, little rivulets that join and pool. Water gives everyone weight, makes the wide white trousers cling and the noiseless bodies squeak and splash. A kick lets droplets spurt and arc. The back wall rises and reveals a blurred, shimmering reflection of the stage, over which the figures seem to scud through clouds.

It sounds lovely, and visually, and no doubt spiritually, it is; but this is dance without edges, so placid it becomes infuriating. Eyes remain downcast, which makes the production an introverted exercise. Music and dance fit together almost too perfectly – it might be more interesting if they could rub up against each other. Instead, the cello’s ruminative groan, the hushed rise and fall, soon become wearying, resolutely internalised: who needs the audience?

With no visible tension on stage, where does it all go? Into me, mostly: by the end, as the dancers left via an achingly slow sigh, my arms were clamped around my sides, my shoulders jammed up by my ears, my legs wound so tightly round each other I could hear my arteries squeal.

Unlike Cloud Gate’s ravishing illusion, the aerial dance company Gravity & Levity revels in unadorned craft. There is, as one of the cast declares at the off, no razzle and no dazzle. No circus stunts and, praise the Lord, no Lycra. In its new piece, Shift, the tackle and sandbags are undisguised; we watch the cast clamber in and out of harnesses. They don’t fly high, but gestures and pragmatic details become absorbing. This is a piece that shows its workings.

The downside is that you spend a lot of time watching people hauling kit about and buckling things. The contemporary choreographers who collaborate on this triple bill embrace the functional aesthetic, but only Charlotte Vincent lets the performers dream as well as drudge. Vincent loves to drag off-stage tensions into the spotlight. (In Broken Chords, made in the throes of a horrible divorce, she pulled a gun on her dancers and admitted: “I’m not coping very well.”) Here, she sets the cast mithering. A young guy blunders around, making a nuisance of himself, women niggle at him from above, and the artistic director, Lindsey Butcher, nags them all for being clumsy: “Half this kit isn’t even ours.”

What people leave behind in flight isn’t so much the body’s earth-bound weight as all the other stuff that drags you down: bad moods, temper, despair. Butcher initially appears careworn, burdened by keeping her young colleagues in line. As soon as Vincent hoists her just above the ground and lets her duet with a lurching plank of wood, however, she abandons herself to flight as to a dream. A plank and a passion in blissful pursuit: it’s a mes-merising combination. To a chilled soundtrack by Daniel Weaver, Butcher curls beneath the timber, somnolent, graceful and concentrated. It’s not a stunt, it’s a love story.

This is by far the strongest part of the 70-minute show (caught in the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Studio). It’s amusing when a dancer complains about spending most of the evening lugging things around, but it’s true: Butcher hogs the fun, bringing Shift uncomfortably close to a vanity project. Only Vincent’s segment comes off. Charles Linehan’s quietly swooping choreography should be great for this company, but doesn’t fly, while a laborious finale by the crea-tors of Stomp sinks like a stone. They reassemble Mish Weaver’s kinetic set into a convoluted percussive instrument. Planks dawdle in the air, weights plummet, ropes shift and sway like a warship’s rigging. After an age of preparation, gamely yanking on ropes in mid-air, the cast produces the lamest piece of percussion with the wood and weights. If your heart were beating that feebly, you’d book an ambulance. It’s an awful lot of work to thump a bit of wood.

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