A part of Greenwich + Docklands International Festival 2013, Dancing City brought a series of weekday lunchtime events to the squares and gardens below Canary Wharf’s looming structures, and culminated in a jam-packed programme on Saturday afternoon. Companies working with Chinese pole, German wheel and acrobalance were programmed alongside dance pieces featuring ballet, contemporary, and hip-hop. The professional companies were joined by the events of Big Dance’s Youth Dance Day, and the whole programme concluded with Tangled Feet’s One Million, an exciting crescendo featuring live music and fireworks.

Beginning a performance trail that led the audience around Canary Wharf, Joli Vyann’s H2H injected the area’s cool, sleek, business vibe with creativity and spontaneity. Two girls and two boys got up to real antics with each other and with two woolly jumpers as they journeyed through the seminal moments in their relationships. The choreography was densely packed with fun and tricks, the expansive throwing and catching of bodies combined with intricate gestural motifs. The acrobalance was integrated with the dancing both physically and through the meaning and narrative of the piece, making these skills more than mere spectacle. One performer giving birth to a rolled-up jumper whilst balanced above the heads of the others was just the sort of bizarre tableau that gave the piece its character. These compositions were suspended for a few precious moments and then continued, often falling straight into complex phrases that were seamlessly interspersed within the dancing. Amidst the acrobatics and rugby scrums, a section with a duet and a solo placed together bought to mind DV8’s Can We Talk About This?. Two entangled lovers supported and clambered over each other while a series of signs and gestures – such as walking two fingers down an arm or a covering of the eyes – were performed in an adjacent male solo. This allowed the audience to ponder on or even question the relationship between the two lovers by opening up the possibility of multiple interpretations. This section was intriguingly beautiful, suspended between the antics of the rest of the show.

Following the trail to the next courtyard, Compagnie Massala’s Deviation delivered hip-hop, breaking and a German wheel act. The piece revolved around a car that provided a moving stage for a solo performance of locking and popping that took place on its roof. The acts presented by the company’s performers were separated by sequences where they ran around the car and bounced from it – ‘filler’ sections in comparison to their robotics or German wheel skills. Although containing highly skilled acts, the performance as a whole became disjointed.

Bursting with energy, performed by the fountains in another courtyard, Grounded’s Street Jam was a refreshingly enjoyable interlude separating the heavier, more thought-provoking shows. A jamming session featuring Charleston, lindy-hop, tap and breaking, this piece was short, snappy and explosive. The personality, charm and excitement, expressed through the risk of improvisation, was just as thrilling to watch as the highly polished but more dangerous H2H. This setting was a perfect opportunity to showcase some real hoofing, of which two tappers at the rear gave only a glimpse.

Swedish company i19 performed their piece Layers around a Chinese pole. The height of the pole and the presence and focus of the three performers added to the existing cityscape as they performed between it and the riverside. After scaling the pole himself, guitarist David Björkén serenaded the remaining two performers, alternating between humming, strumming and playing the harmonica. In a solo that went nowhere but up and down, Fabian Wixe nimbly wove his way along the pole between ground and sky as he added and subtracted layers in space. It was an indulgent show of skill that, whilst making the audience gasp, was also disarmingly pensive and captivating. Most memorable in this piece, and perhaps the entire day, was the grounded duet that happened almost entirely on one level: laying along the ground, necks entwined, heads side by side, Wixe and Marie Wårell carefully exchanged glances and held each other’s heads in their palms, patiently taking turns to support one another. The pair performed a gentle and supportive duet that was attentive and methodical in choreographing a bobbing, shifting exchange of weight. Ebbing and flowing, back and forth, the couple rocked on their bottoms together as they sat on the ground, creating an alluring shared tenderness that sent shivers down the spine.

In the early evening, crowds surrounded the water of Middle Dock – reaching along the bridge and up the stairs, even climbing up along the balconies above for a birds-eye view of Two Sink, Three Float by Belgian company Studio Eclipse. Three dancers appeared to breathe underwater, suspended in the depths beneath a rectangular raft. Alternating between mermaid-like sylphs and playful seals, two very wet female dancers and one male appeared and disappeared in a hauntingly captivating dance of object play and rippling water. The dancers’ drenched, off-white robes, and the cold, murky water matched perfectly the cool metals and glass of the surrounding architecture, like Canary Wharf’s own ‘Middle Dock Monsters’. Often returning to pyramidal compositions containing a preying upwards stare, these dark and knowing water creatures composed moments reminiscent of Théodore Géricault’s oil painting ‘The Raft of The Medusa’, recalling notions of isolation in an expansive waterscape. The constant dunking of their heads below the water and the flicking of long drenched hair added an almost violent edge to this sinister piece that both beguiled and mesmerised.