As the first and last works in this triple bill amply demonstrate, the members of Rambert Dance Company thrive on speed and daring. Scribblings, a new curtain-raiser from the American choreographer Doug Varone, and Anatomica #3, which the Canadian André Gingras made last year, are both pressure-cooked ensemble pieces that emphasise the dancers’ steely yet supple élan. Slipped in between them like a balm is a revival of Siobhan Davies’s Carnival of the Animals, a one-act work fashioned with enough wit, simplicity and inventive charm to soothe the savage beasts unleashed by the other two dances.

Scribblings derives its orchestrated chaos from John Adams’s three-part Chamber Symphony, a percolating chunk of madcap modernism that sends the dancers kicking and tumbling pellmell across the stage. In their bright clothing they resemble overgrown, athletically inclined children running amok. They swipe, slide or burst into backwards runs beneath an enormous green lampshade that initially swings wildly overhead. Anchoring these frenetic outbursts is an uneasy floor-based duet for Thomasin Gülgeç and Malgorzata Dzierzon. Could its blunt, nagging intimacy be the psychological source for the rest of this inconclusive piece’s hijinks?

Originally created for the seminal company Second Stride, Davies’s Carnival dates from 1982. Recaptured from the past at Rambert’s request, it could be the most endearing dance that this veteran British choreographer has made. Backed by an enlargement of a Rousseau jungle scene, Davies’s abstract zoological study is a delight. It is also probably the best and least literal interpretation of Saint-Saëns’ enchanting music that exists.

Elegant in white tailcoats, the eight dancers (including Angela Towler) slip gracefully between suggested incarnations as finned, feathered or four-legged creatures. Highlights are a blue-gloved school of fish, Kyril Burlov’s extended handstand in the Long Ears section and Alexander Whitley’s beautiful turn as a swan. It’s crowd-pleasing without condescension.

Gingras’s finale takes its cues from Joseph Hyde’s score, a clamour of fat bass and pots-and-pans percussion. First a small squadron of identical queens graciously steps to delicate gamelan rhythms. Stripping themselves of their mock-royal garb, the cast then plunge into a gymnastic free-for-all of vaulting leaps off a high ramp jutting above a heap of mattresses. Post-9/11 references and ruthless displays of their own bodies darken the dancers’ recklessly celebratory energy.

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