The Back Garden Project, part of the ROH's new makeover as a sharing, caring opera house, is aimed at diverting privileged resources to the out-at-elbow independent dance scene. In the project's second mini-season of new work, the Seven Sisters Group has transformed the venue into a chamber of fairy-tale horrors. Next week virtuoso Asian dancer Mavin Khoo will be presenting a piece inspired by the Kama Sutra, and this week Colin Poole is showing three works themed around life lived within the "commodity culture".
But the best work in the programme, Bad Faith, seems to have been made prior to Poole's involvement with the project proper. It's a love duet, danced by him and Rachel Krische, in which every move is performed for the benefit of an invisible mirror. To a relentless soundtrack of disco music and Ravel's Bolero (inspirer of some of the most narcissistic choreography in the repertory), the couple execute a slick mating ritual that progresses confidently from dance-floor to sex. Poole's smart angular moves allow the dancers' bodies to echo and interlace with functional intimacy, even as they focus intently on the visual effects that they are creating. The results are odd, chilling and sometimes very funny. When the couple lock tongues in a deep muscular kiss, they surface for breath only to voice-mime the throbbing lyrics of what sounds like a Barry White song. When they mime sex, it's to an uptempo dance beat. The two dancers are excellent, competitively fixated on their own agendas, and the choreography steps neatly around the potential cliches of the material.
In theory, the following solo, Safe, puts an interesting spin on the ideas behind Bad Faith. Sonja Peedo performs most of it with her face screened behind a surgeon's mask and fencing helmet; when she finally removes them, her unsheathed gaze has a hostile intensity that changes absolutely the way in which we look at her. But the effectiveness of the concept is blunted by the deliberate minimalism of the dance material - so bare and over-extended that it loses even the Clore Studio's polite audience.
In Nobodies Perfect, three female dancers are masked behind plastic dolls' faces that fix their expressions into a scary rictus of a smile. Dressed like tailor's dummies, they prance around a beauty parlour practising moves for their waiting "public". The set and costumes outline a savage cartoon commentary, but Poole's choreography lacks the stamina and invention to fully animate it. Ironically, the piece fails by relying too heavily on its design - design that was probably made possible by ROH assistance.
Until September 22. Box office: 020-7304 4000.
