Sleepless/Spit/Sleight of Hand

Published Thursday 10 May 2007 at 15:35 by Katie Colombus

Today’s dance audience is a demanding one, constantly searching for references to our everyday existence, trawling the mind of the choreographer for a meaning, a truth, or something to keep our cogs whirling.

But for those dance purists interested in the finer aspects of contemporary ballet, here is a company to sit back, cast all else aside and revel in the sheer artistry and lucid beauty of these dancers.

The 17-22-year-old young guns of NDT2 - the little sister company to Nederlands Dans Teater - move with magical grace and an innocence that only inhabits dancers this young, as they revel in their new-found passion to be on stage.

They expel a shining naivety as they relish in the choreography by Jiri Kylian in the opening piece, Sleepless, made up of fluid, slinky movements with quick twitchy flicks and sparky jumps. We see dancers duetting, gracefully gliding into one another and through a flexible wall.

Soft music, like glass rain drops smashing lightly onto piano keys, distant gunfire and whispered voices act as an adhesive between the monochrome set and the dextrous performers. This is dance to marvel at - not to watch in order to get something from it.

Roger van der Poel, in particular, catches the eye with his marvellous strength, elegance and agility.

In stark contrast, the second section of choreographic canapes from Batsheva Artistic Director Ohad Naharin is baffling. Disjointed, irregular movement to contradictory music sees cream torsos flinching out of a line-up, a surreal, minimalist baroque duet and men smearing themselves with muddy water.

The banality is broken by a gratuitous episode revealing the reason for the title, Spit, when a girl squats over the face of a male dancer and the sound of someone hocking one back reverberates around the startled, somewhat bemused auditorium.

The UK premiere of Sleight of Hand, by Paul Lightfoot and Sol Leon, thankfully reigns the evening back in with a dramatic, bewitching performance danced to a huge score - Philip Glass’ Symphony nr 2: Movement II. A condemned man and two lovers move in beguiling fashion, orchestrated by giant judges three times their size, with terrifyingly fast and visually nightmarish upper body choreography. The brooding darkness, vigour and intensity of this dance drama shows European modern dance at its best.