‘NDT2’s young dancers hail from a dozen different countries. Watch them on-stage, however, and they all belong to one united nation: Nederlands Dans Theater, a realm of exacting standards where everyone is expected to have star quality – but no-one, other than the ensemble itself, is the star attraction. And no matter who comes, or goes, the calibre of performance stays resolutely undiminished. Little wonder, then, that NDT2 stays such a hot ticket – or that Friday’s packed house greeted each short piece like blissed-out kids in a candy store. Whatever they do these dancers are, indeed, exceedingly tasty. They can flip from goofy humour, all bendy bodies and knuckle-dragging Neanderthal lurchings – as in Skew-Whiff (a Lightfoot-Leon creation) – to the kind of lyrical, elegant doublework that is a central element of Hans van Manen’s Simple Things. They can do split-second timing, hands flicka-flacking precisely, faces nicely deadpan, in a short firecracker like Shutters Shut – another Lightfoot-Leon morsel of cunning invention, set to a whimsical poem by Gertrude Stein and crammed with movement to match her word-play. Andrea Schermoly and Alexander Ekman carried off the choreographic witticisms with artless aplomb.’