Blaze: the Streetdance Sensation, Peacock Theatre

From the messy teenager's bedroom, unstoppable zest emerges

With a title like that, and a slug across the posters that so boastingly prejudges last night's premiere, some of us might keep our sceptical specs on when we turn up at the spirits-lowering Peacock Theatre to see this latest leap by mainstream stage forces onto the bandwagon of the most exciting trend in dance of the past 15 years. Sheathe those sceptical specs. This is a show blazing with talent and young exuberance, and it will rejuvenate you faster than a Red Bull.

Pied Piper, Barbican & Into the Hoods, QEH

Hip hop makes exciting Christmas family theatre at London's prime spots

Hip hop is the new ballet. Instead of mostly girls in tutus, mostly boys in tracksuits; instead of pointe-shoes, trainers; instead of arabesques and fouettés, handstands and windmills; above all, instead of nice, nasty. The smell on stage is burning rubber from the shoes; the atmosphere is electric; lights fractured; discipline razor-sharp. Some armies and ballet companies would crawl over broken glass to have the ensemble unanimity that’s displayed in Boy Blue’s cracking show Pied Piper at the Barbican.

Insane in the Brain, Peacock Theatre

Swedish Cuckoo's Nest has two good scenes, but not enough thrilling dancing

On Britain’s Got Talent this year Diversity and Flawless raised the bar for street dance as far as mass British audiences were concerned, a public increasingly schooled by Sadler’s Wells’ smart and eclectic annual spring hip-hop festival. So Bounce, the Swedish crew  returning to London with its 2006 version of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, has new standards to compete with.