After 25 years of conjuring their special brand of stage magic, Momix possess an exuberant back catalogue from which to cull their finest moments. This retrospective programme might just be the ideal way to see their work.
Most of their past shows have been based on individual themes (Baseball, or the desert in Opus Cactus), and it has often been a stretch for choreographer-director Moses Pendleton to float an entire evening of his trademark body sculpture and visual illusion from a single idea. Not so with Greatest Hits!, which delivers its succession of 15 highlights with dreamy ease.
The group's range is unquestionably impressive. There is artful puppetry in the giant master of ceremonies, whose spidery limbs jiggle with clumsy grace as he introduces the evening. At the opposite extreme is the unadorned gymnastic skill of the trio in Pole Dance, who lever themselves through an airy ballet of swooping, suspended balances, or the couple in Skiva who, wearing a pair of skis, execute a mesmeric gyrating, somersaulting pas de deux.
The choreography can be brazenly grandstanding - orchestrating four dancers into an undulating, eight-legged Gila lizard - but it also has moments of tender humanity. The ballerina in White Widow, spinning on pointe shoes while suspended from a rope, strives ecstatically to escape gravity. We feel her exhilaration but also her despair as she ends up dangling limply, tethered to the rope and her own physical limitations.
The charm of Momix is how much they achieve with such minimal technology. There are only 11 dancers, and very little gadgetry. Yet while the company rarely venture far beyond the clever visual conceit or choreographic gag, they still find something serious to say about the possibilities of the human imagination.
· Until November 24. Box office: 0844 412 4300.
