Robert Cohan, the grand-daddy of British modern dance, is 80 next week and it's partly in celebration of his long life and career that Phoenix Dance Theatre have revived his 1977 classic Forest. The revival is also a tribute, though, to the transformation that's been going on at Phoenix who, a few seasons ago, would have had a hard time fielding dancers capable of performing this beautiful, difficult piece.
It's not just the physical demands that make Forest a daunting revival, but the fact that Phoenix are trained in a completely different style from the original cast, London Contemporary Dance Theatre, which in 1977 were at an extraordinary peak. The wild quivering stillnesses in Forest, the huge flights of jumps, were all tailored to their skills.
Right from the start, it's clear this new cast won't be time-travelling back to 1977. The physical qualities that made LCDT's dancers look so glossy and so mythical (the sucked-in power of the gut, the radiant lift of the chest) are absent. But if they're unable to mimic their predecessors, it doesn't stop Phoenix from tackling the piece with imagination and accuracy, and it is a gift both to Cohan and to us how sharply they rediscover the feral strangeness and the physical clarity that made Forest one of the finest works of its era.
The two other works in the programme restore Phoenix to familiar artistic ground. Didy Veldman's See Blue Through claims inspiration from being underwater but, while dark currents float through the movement, it revolves around a core of hard, flat, fast dancing that gives the piece a generic, new millennium look. It's all a little bit sexy, a little bit techno, and a little bit neurotic, but it is designed to flatter the dancers and Phoenix emerge from it looking sleek and assured.
If Veldman choreographs for dancers, Darshan Singh Bhuller has his eye brazenly on the audience. Eng-er-land is close to cartoon, with projected graphics that speed the cast through city streets, in search of booze, clubs and curry. It's cutely ingenious, but the material is thin, with pee and vomit jokes that play too crudely and choreography that doesn't hold your attention. Bhuller knows what he's doing though: Saturday night's crowd couldn't get enough of it.
· At Cliffs Pavilion, Southend on Sea, March 30. Box office: 01702 351 135. Then touring.
