Dance GB, Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich, review Sheltering from the drizzle under a parasol, on the lawn of the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, sipping a fruity Pimm's from a plastic cup, while waiting for the UK's three national dance companies to deliver a trio of new pieces, in an Olympics-inspired collaboration, in a specially erected big top. What could possibly be more British? Dance GB was the idea of English National Ballet's outgoing director, Wayne Eagling who, as a principal dancer with the Royal Ballet, used to perform in a similar construction in Battersea Park in the mid-Seventies. The project (which had already been staged in Glasgow and Wales) was always going to be Olympic in spirit, but not only in terms of the concord between its constituent companies ENB, National Dance Company Wales, and Scottish Ballet. It couldn't help being more than a little competitive, too. Which troupe would - as it were - get the gold? In the event, that medal went resoundingly to the baby of the bunch. NDCW is young, and less than one sixth the size of (say) ENB, both of which prompted its director Ann Sholem to aim as high as possible in her choice of choreographer. She did well to enlist the venerable Christopher Bruce, who in turn delivered an enchanting little piece, Dream, the most enjoyable of the three and the bravest, too, in the directness with which it addressed the Olympian brief. I say "brave" because sports and dance are often immensely awkward bedfellows. Sport thrives on the unpredictable, its beauty a generally unintentional side effect of doing the job well. Dance, by comparison, is necessarily choreographed to the hilt, and its elegance is not a by-product, but the whole point. Such worries swiftly fell away, however. After a slightly cutesy but nonetheless winning opening, with the 10 dancers, in Fifties garb, beetling about at a school sports day, Ravel's Bolero (of all things) kicked in, and we saw where these "children's" dreams might lead. Unsurprisingly, the more staged or physically measured activities - gymnastics, synchronised swimming, figure-skating, even rowing - translated particularly well into dance. But Bruce's steps throughout trod a dainty and often witty line between imitation and invention, while the company - some of whose members have considerably more generous bodies than their balletic counterparts - danced with power and pizzazz. Itzik Galili's And the Earth Shall Bear Again, which opened the evening, saw the Israeli choreographer pull ENB's classical dancers into all sorts of extraordinary, Wayne McGregoresque, hyperextended contemporary shapes, to a clangily percussive score by John Cage. Galili should start spreading his wings more with the design and lighting he employs, and the first and third movements failed to match the astonishing second, but he encouraged lithe and fearless performances from the dancers, and the piece held the attention well. After an overlong but heartening dance film involving children from all three countries came Martin Lawrance's Run For It, for Scottish ballet, set to the foxy syncopations of John Adams. As it happens, SB's director Ashley Page (also outgoing) has himself, in the past, delivered remarkable work to Adams's foxily propulsive syncopations, but Lawrance seemed far less inspired by the American minimalist. Despite an arresting set by Marin Boyce, this athletically-minded venture into modern-classical territory was modern-ballet-by-numbers, and it fell way short of Lawrance's usually organic and compelling work. Silver to ENB; to the Scots, the bronze. Until July 8. Tickets: ballet.org.uk