Ballet de Lorraine: Acid Gems and a Folia review – clubby cool with a wild streak

Adam Linder delivers a zingy riff on Balanchine’s Jewels while Marco da Silva Ferreira masses a raucous party crowd

In 2008 Adam Linder won the Place prize, the biggest choreography award in the UK at the time, and then seemingly disappeared. Actually he went to Berlin, but suffice to say, it’s a long time since his work has been seen on a London stage. Now he is back with a piece made for Ballet de Lorraine’s double bill.

Acid Gems is inspired by George Balanchine’s 1967 abstract ballet Jewels. Instead of the rich hues of emeralds or rubies, as in the original, here we get sharp-sour neon, a backdrop drenched in Wham Bar pink, cut with a palette of other E numbers (lit by artist Shahryar Nashat). Linder trained at the Royal Ballet School before rejecting ballet, but he’s clearly still in conversation with his roots. Although at the outset, this piece seems to owe more to Sharon Eyal than the likes of Balanchine – the unnerving tone, aloof stares, slow undulations and jutting hips, the clan of dancers moving in a group as tight as their Lycra. But it expands into something more interesting that treads the line between forms: entrechat jumps and spiky angles and then a version of the Running Man. Linder makes use of simplistic geometry with zinging clarity.

The vogue in dance for clubby, model-sexy androgyny that Linder taps into is also where Marco da Silva Ferreira’s piece a Folia begins. (The Portuguese choreographer was a finalist in last year’s Rose prize.) It could be 2am in the dark haze of a dancefloor, with a blitz of eccentric costumes: fringing, shoulder pads, tie-dye, rips, chaps and straps; a skin-coloured bodysuit with a green ponytail.

An oddly stilted 4/4 melody unexpectedly transforms into the harpsichord arpeggios of Corelli’s La Folia violin sonata (reimagined by composer Luis Pestana) and the gathering turns riotous, the raucous crowd whooping as dancers do tricks. Da Silva Ferreira’s idea is that a party, a gathering to dance wildly and free, can change the world. But it weirdly reminded me of the hedonistic court life in the TV show The Great, with its self-congratulatory celebrations of excess and exhibitionism. That scene is not the end of the journey – later, this piece starts to feel a bit too pleased with itself, a guest overstaying their welcome – but is an ebullient highlight. Now where’s the after-party?

• At Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, London, until 7 March