George Piper Dances, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London<br></br>Compania Nacional de Danza, Sadler's Wells, London

They're hip, they're available and they're dancing up your street

There is nothing on earth more boring than the highbrow/lowbrow debate. Almost everyone who works in performance knows the truth of the matter: that it is possible to do quality work and appeal to a wide audience if only you hit the right formula. If only, if only. Few ever do.

But if the roar of consent at the Queen Elizabeth Hall last week is anything to go by, two breakaways from the Royal Ballet have cracked it. Michael Nunn and William Trevitt, Channel 4's "Ballet Boyz" and now performers, co-directors and impresarios with their own company, George Piper Dances, have tapped into the zeitgeist like none other in a decade of dance. What makes this remarkable is that their latest programme, confidently titled Critics' Choice *****, is dominated by the kind of abstract contemporary ballet that would normally be seen as difficult – inaccessible to all but furrow-browed dance geeks.

Yet Nunn and Trevitt make it hip and available, beckoning the audience in. Video is the key, and in the rough-and-ready, hand-held style that characterised their TV diaries, the pair offer audiences an opportunity to spy on the dancers' world. Five choreographers, each given the same limited studio time, agreed to make a short piece and be profiled on camera. The resulting glimpses of creative struggle, sweaty toil and occasional hilarity succeed in giving a friendly human face to the product, while the diversity of the work itself is an A-Z of dance possibility. We are instructed and entertained.

Akram Khan wove his life story into his piece, Red or White. Michael Nunn spoke Khan's early dance memories of Indian Kathak while two men (Billy Trevitt and Matthew Hart) thrashed out an intricately worked unison of floor-bound moves. Danced partly in silence, partly to a meaty wall of synthesised double bass sound (by Mukul), and ending in a blaze of red light, the duet neatly encapsulated the fragile complexity of Khan's dual heritage, and the way those two filaments have sparked into something new.

We're then whisked off in a yellow cab to the New York studio of Christopher Wheeldon, where the choreographer talks about the stresses of making his duet for Nunn and Oxana Panchenko. He even shows us his facial spots to prove it. When we later get to see the finished duet performed live, its boneless rolling motion – each dancer bending into the other like reeds in a river bed – is that much more present because we saw what it took to achieve it.

Not all the choreographic stars were 100 per cent compliant. Michael Clark put up a well-argued resistance to letting the cameras roll, but they managed to film him saying it, so that went in instead. And in fact his contribution – Satie Stud, a solo for Trevitt set to virtually unknown Erik Satie – was the most remarkable of the lot. I hardly think it took the wit (and expense) of fashion designer Hussein Chalayan to come up with the tiny skirt that Trevitt wore. But the way Clark harnessed some of the more epicurean ballet steps to create a sense of far-off antiquity – a perfect match with the Satie – was intricate and exquisite. For five minutes William Trevitt was that Egyptian slave, or figure on a Greek vase. And it's to the credit of his strong, sleek performance that this didn't for a moment seem fey.

Matthew Bourne was another who fudged the rules, just a bit. He clearly hadn't time to make a new piece so he offered up an old one, a Fred & Ginger number from Town & Country, an early AMP work. Its pastiche style sat a little oddly with the modernism, and I never felt Nunn or Hart looked sufficiently relaxed to catch the steps' debonair shrug (they may have too much technique). But the comedy was nicely timed, and the air of fond regret for an era of gentler courtship (if not actually of men doing embroidery in the park) was beautifully conveyed.

Least effective of the five-star contributions was, I felt, the five-minuter by Russell Maliphant, but only because the show's second half offered a more splendid example of his craft. Maliphant's extraordinarily tough, no-nonsense style is raised to its highest expression in Torsion, the half-hour piece that capped the evening. In its celebration of maleness and male bonding, and the subtle tests of strength that this entails, it makes a compelling if oblique comment on modern mores. As a pure display of physical power and control, it is a knockout.

Too bad the dancers of the Compania Nacional de Danza, "Spain's foremost modern dance company", couldn't nip over to South Bank for a look. They are marvellous technicians, schooled – like Nunn and Trevitt – in the precision of classical style but intent – again like Nunn and Trevitt – on applying that technique to other ends. The trouble is that their material isn't half as good as they are.

Nacho Duato – the company's artistic director – is a great one for theatrical effects. At Sadler's Wells his dancers got hoisted to the ceiling, showered on by rice, upstaged by free-floating giant mobiles and walled up in gold leaf. They also gave their hearts and souls to do their best for Duato's choreography – all to very little effect. Duato's gift is all sawdust and wrapping. You watch, you listen, you forget. And to think that Ross Stretton wanted to embed Duato at the core of the Royal Ballet's repertory (he did, indeed, introduce two Duato works last year). His successor, Monica Mason, the other day announced her first season – a careful balance of re-discovery and adventure. Duato and his ilk are swept away. In their place, among other home-grown innovators, is Russell Maliphant. Sometimes it takes a wrong turn to see the way ahead.

j.gilbert@independent.co.uk

George Piper Dances: The Lowry, Salford (0161 876 2000), Wed & Thur; tour continues to 26 June