Questions of scale can matter to choreographers almost as much as the standard of dancers or the quality of music. When Hofesh Shechter's Uprising was performed at Sadler's Wells earlier this year, its anatomisation of a hot, sweaty, aggressive male community looked disappointingly diffuse. Seen in the dark intimacy of The Place, it is a different work: the loping, skittering, grappling bodies of the men become dangerously alive.
Shechter's latest project, however, will reverse this process. In Your Rooms has just premiered at The Place, but over the next six months it will move on to Queen Elizabeth Hall and ultimately to Sadler's Wells, expanding with extra dancers and live music.
One thing that won't be affected is the intelligence underpinning the material: In Your Rooms is inspired by nothing less than an inquiry into the structure of the universe. Accompanied by a monologue that puzzles over the transformation of random matter into people and buildings, of simple emotional impulses into complex relationships, Shechter's choreography attempts to put dramatic flesh on to philosophical issues.
Initially, his nine dancers seem to function as human building blocks, their language restricted to blind repetition or to flickers of raw emotion, but over 40 minutes the choreography seems to embody man's desperate project towards meaning, as the movement eventually converges into five minutes of climactic, full-bodied dance.
This conclusion feels grippingly achieved, exhilarating without denying the work's existential edge. But the material leading up to it is often discouragingly hard work: deep in shadow, severely curtailed, there seem to be whole gaps in the choreography waiting to be filled. Despite committed performances, this is very much a work in progress.
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