Contemporary dance on skates, ice dance without sparkles and mark-schemes – this is territory that has remained weirdly unexplored. But the wonderfully fresh and inventive Canadian group Le Patin Libre are worth the wait: a quintet of bearded, dreadlocked, baggy-jeaned dancers who spark with movement ideas that I’ve never seen on ice before, let alone on stage.
The group (four men and one woman) are former championship skaters and at moments they remind us of the fact, pulling off dizzying spins and spiralling arabesques with a fine insouciance. But much of Vertical Influences plays with choreography and imagery that rinses viewers of all conventional expectations.
In the first half, the dancers move together as an urban tribe. Accompanied by electronic beats and a lacing of melodic lyricism, they circle round each other at astonishing speeds, and in even more astonishing slow motion. They bait each other, b-boy style, in risky shoulder and toe-spinning moves, they hunker down in hip-hop footwork or wheel into formations as high and free as flocking birds.
All five are joyously engaging performers, communicating a pure body rush of liberation and space. But they’re even more astounding in the second half, for which we’re seated on benches at the end of the rink. Down at ice level, with the expanse of the rink exaggerated by Lucy Carter’s clever lighting, the dancers sweep towards us in a flourish of danger, speed and frozen air. They divide and reform in choreography of exhilarating inventiveness: a solo of staccato footwork that slashes and slices the ice, kaleidoscopic configurations in which limbs and bodies are angled into comic, impossible shapes.
It’s chilly down there on the ice, but Vertical Influences is one of those rare shows I could willingly have sat through all over again.
• Until 31 October. Venue: Alexandra Palace Ice Rink, London.
