Independent choreographers have a tough time. They could certainly do with more projects such as Gotland's Premiere Space residency, which has given resources to five British and Swedish choreographers to create a programme of new work. It would be pointless though to pretend that more than one of Gotland's beneficiaries has produced something fit for the professional stage. Eva Nilson's Backtracks for instance seems an object lesson in the pitfalls of comedy. It's a strenuously surreal trio in which a man with odd socks and an allergy to cigarette smoke is caught between a fag-toting ballerina and a woman with a peculiar tendency to stagger around backwards. Nilson might have made something mildly funny if she'd tried harder to imagine a logic for her characters, as it is she simply smirks at her own weirdness.
There's a fatal element of smirk too in Shintaro O-ue's Renoveringsobjekt. This rambling duet is stuffed with fashionable devices - faux martial arts, sadomasochistic stage business, and a jokey patter that allows the two dancers to speculate archly about where the piece is heading. Someone should have told the choreographer the answer is nowhere.
Someone too should have offered to edit his material, just as they should have edited Michael Rolknick's Thread, a frantic rifle through ballet history which references everything from Diaghilev to Frederick Ashton. The overload is numbing, and it almost goes without saying that the most successful works in the programme are the most straightforward. Joakim Stephenson's Butterflykiss starts with some worryingly winsome giggles, but evolves into a fresh, tender duet. And by far the best is Jennifer Jackson's sharply structured homage to Marie Taglioni, Retrieving the Sylph. As Jackson's minimal moves blossom into delicate flurries of romantic imagery the effect is both simple and rapt.
