Arts: Tapmeisters meet body poppers

Cool Heat Urban Beat play fast and loose with the laws of physics. Louise Levene gets disorientated

THIS IS traditional call-and-response dance: the more you call the more they'll respond. The Edinburgh audience called and called and called. Cool Heat Urban Beat made their British debut at the Festival last month with a show that had all the hallmarks of a global campaign for trainers - jumpy, jive-talking young men with baggy clothes and amplifiers the size of Venus.

But the obvious youth appeal is only half the story. I think one would be hard put to find anyone who wouldn't have a good time - it isn't even particularly loud.

Cool Heat Urban Beat's 10-man show is a collaboration between Rennie Harris's Pure Movement Hip Hop outfit and Herbin Van Cayseele's Urban Tap trio. The two styles collide in a gang war between traditional tap and the more modern dances of the street. The whole Sharks/Jets set-up is a little contrived but it has respectable roots in all the great tap- dancing acts where each soloist tries to top the last routine.

After an initial three-man tour de force the tap dancers each do party pieces. Rod Ferrone, dressed like a lost member of Madness in dark suit and bowler hat, enacts an elaborate tap mambo, his feet stealing their rhythm from the congas like an extra element in the rhythm section. Fellow tapper Max Pollak's feet pulsate with an angry rhythm that suggests the skipping feet of the boxer or the relentless tattoo of fists against a punch ball.

The most obvious parallel for this display of testosterone tap is the successful global touring phenomenon Tap Dogs, but whereas Tap Dogs is essentially a formula that recruits useful hoofers and turns them into clogging Chippendales, these guys dance with the whole body - the Tap Dogs were pretty well dead from the waist up.

In the final sequences all-out war is declared and the tap dancers attempt to syncopate the enemy into submission. The pounding footwork of Van Cayseele forces big Rennie Harris to melt into the floor, his disarticulating bulk crumpling down into a disjointed heap.

The tapmeisters were a hard act to follow but the break dancing and body popping were little short of astonishing. Some moves were familiar - as when the dancer's curled body hits the floor spinning then comes to rest like a discarded coin - but I don't think I've ever seen anyone strip off their shell suit at the same time.

The magical final solos were of this order, big bodies playing fast and loose with the laws of physics and doing tricks that pushed back the boundaries of belief.

By the end, I was losing my grip on reality. Did I really see a man glide the width of the stage on his head? Sawing Anita Harris in half has nothing on this.

Now at The Peacock Theatre, London WC2 to 27 September (0171-314 8800)