The dancers stream across the stage like molten mercury: fast, fluid and flashy in shades of gunmetal, anthracite and glossy black, through to dazzling white. Quicksilver seems synonymous with Double Concerto, Christopher Hampson's sensational new work for English National Ballet. It's a glorious kaleidoscope of pure dance: a creative double whammy, visually ravishing, choreographically packed with wit and inventive human architecture.
This is no doubt a classic for the future. There were sharp intakes of breath all round at the set by Gary "Fido" Harris, artistic director of New Zealand Ballet, with its giant silver prongs like scattered, ultraviolet-lit mah jong sticks. Principals Daria Klimentova and Jan-Erik Wikstrom pose, brilliant white, as if at a 1970s disco.
From then on it's an explosion of action, the 38 dancers streaming on and off stage to Poulenc's Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra. The movement melds wonderfully with the music, shifting mood and pace in a maelstrom of physicality from languid elegance to high-octane exuberance. An aerial view, one suspects, would put Busby Berkeley to shame. The iridescent costumes are stunning with seven layers of pleated net in each tutu, as if to outdo Come Dancing.
Hampson creates thrilling shapes and colour coordinations in a shimmering mix of groupings, couplings, and bravura bursts. It's sharp, strobe-fast and danced with infectious enjoyment by the young company, obviously thriving under new artistic director Matz Skoog.
Hampson camps it up as well, with an obvious pastiche of the Little Swans. He gives us shades of Sleeping Beauty, too, with the chorus line of cavaliers and ballerinas sweeping into arabesques penchées. Klimentova is a joy, poised and elegant, while Wikstrom goes for the macho pyrotechnics with an uncanny look of the young Nureyev. Double Concerto is easily the most enjoyable new work I've seen this year and worthy of being sandwiched between two Balanchine greats. Effervescent and intoxicating, it's the dance equivalent of uncorking a bottle of bubbly.
Balanchine's Apollo was impressive, with Dmitri Gruzdyev mesmeric as the imperious and narcissistic deity, all flexing muscles and contained power, while Joanna Maley was a cool, clean-cut Terpsichore with expansive gestures and legs like a gazelle. The final tableau, mirroring the sunray halo on the ancient statue of Phoebus Apollo was stunning.
At Bristol Hippodrome from Tuesday until December 1. Box office: 0870 6077500.
