Flash photography is not only permitted during Held, it is an essential part of a show in which photographer Lois Greenfield collaborates with ADT to find a dramatic new interface between motion and stillness. Tracking the 11 dancers on stage like a predatory hunter, Greenfield literally photographs them at the moment of performance. As her images flash up on two large screens, the effect is to miraculously freeze the choreography just as it is plunging onwards into the next phrase.
For the audience, watching this dialogue between speed and stillness, real and recorded material, is to experience a seesawing and hypnotising sensation of deja vu.
Gary Stewart's choreography has been adroitly geared towards this double exposure. A hammering melange of hip-hop and martial arts, overlaid with a flickering gauze of detail, it is packed with photogenic incident. What looks on stage to be frenzied wrestle becomes on screen a series of heroic, beautiful moments as the dancers are captured striding through air, arrested at the apex of a leap, sculpted into hieratic poses. More astonishing is the section where Greenfield takes a series of rapid-fire shots which transform the dancers into images of Shiva, with a dozen flashing arms radiating from their torsos.
Held shows us bodies from perspectives we never imagined. From the point of view of pure dance, however, it is somewhat disappointing. Movement that has been designed so specifically for visual impact inevitably starts to look narcissistic, fetishistic and ultimately empty after 55 minutes. When the photographer's split-second timing and dramatic sense of mission have become the most fascinating spectacle on stage, the choreography has long been relegated to a sideshow.
· At Sheffield City Hall (0114-278 9789) on Wednesday, then touring.
