Dance Umbrella is now in full swing with a programme pitching big-name attractions (Mark Morris, Michael Clark) against smaller-scale work, often presented in odd locations. Its biggest strand this year is the series of discussions, classes and performance called African Crossroads. Four London venues are hosting three full-evening pieces as well as several mixed bills of solos and duets, all designed to give us a taste of the vitality of African dance.

It’s a pity, then, that the opening salvo of the Crossroads season was less than satisfying. I had no problem with the improvisation-based duet between Matthias Sperling and the equally wiry Senegalese dancer Andreya Ouamba. Diplomacy 2 was shown in the Clore Studio at the Royal Opera House as part of Brief Encounters, spotlighting new, short works. This one was informal yet intense, and a good starter before the evening’s main course was served in the Linbury downstairs. There the South African dancer Vincent Mantsoe presented his latest hour-long solo. Billed as a study of tradition versus modernity, Ebhofolo (translation: “this madness”) apparently draws on the spatial concepts behind the traditional African homestead as a way of referencing a more contemporary notion of “head space”.

Mantsoe is a tremendously powerful presence, capable of exuding an electrifying energy that can seem both scary and rapturous. Those qualities were intermittently glimpsed as he strode and leapt within a circle of 19 low, prettily decorated cushions presumably meant to represent dwellings. There was also a good deal of the donning and doffing of clothes and, towards the end, the scattering of a big mound of pink powder across the stage. But dim lighting and, more frustratingly, the overly internalised nature of Mantsoe’s ritualised performance undercut the work’s most intriguing elements. Ebhofolo left me feeling not cold but certainly in the dark.

There was more to connect with in Cabane, a Beckettian dance-theatre collaboration between the Canadian dancer Paul-André Fortier and the artist Rober Racine. Both seriously absurd and peripatetic, it was presented in four London locations over the weekend.

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