Naked
Sadler's Wells, London EC1
Naked was commissioned for Sadler's Wells and created by Michael Nunn and William Trevitt (otherwise known as the Ballet Boyz). This transfixing piece is about sexual relationships. It's chamber dance - as opposed to music - in a room white as a sugar cube (designed by Bob Crowley). The six dancers (Yvette Halfhide, Thomas Linecar, Oxana Panchenko, Monica Zamora - with Nunn and Trevitt) offer versions of a single relationship. Who leads? That is one of the questions dance can ask. The men pick women up as if they were leaves. But the women get away: they float or strut in gauzy dresses and high heels. Programmed to pursue, the men persist.
If there were words involved, they might be obsessive, repetitive - as relationships often are. But word-free, this is a gorgeous commentary on desire (with glamorous video projections by Hugo Glendinning). Towards the end of the first half, there is a magical moment when a breeze blows into the white gauze curtains revealing the blackest of nights beyond. Fernando Corona's music intimates departure: we watch as time runs out and the six graces move fluidly into darkness.
