There's no mistaking the love object in 21, Rafael Bonachela's new piece about celebrity worship. Not only does the piercing little voice of Kylie Minogue feature in Benjamin Wallfisch's accompanying score, but her face and body cast a giant video spell over the dancers during the whole of the work's middle section.
Bonachela has close connections with Kylie, having choreographed her Fever 2002 tour, but while the singer's collaboration with his work is a personal coup, Kylie fans may squirm at the vision it presents. 21 opens with just three dancers: a trio of vaguely alienated narcissists whose sensuous, self-absorbed moves are made more disturbing by the fetishistic lingerie they wear.
The point of their cameo becomes evident as soon as Kylie's image appears. Her flesh-coloured strappy gown is an elaboration of the dancers' outfits, her caressing gestures the inspiration for their vocabulary. The dancers, joined by nine others, are revealed as Kylie wannabes. As they dance en masse beneath their floating, digital goddess, they cast a genuine chill: an army of drone worshippers, who are not only hooked on the Kylie cult, but feed it with their neurotic energies.
Bonachela (now Rambert's associate choreographer) is too interesting a dance maker to content himself with one idea. As his dancers pair off, their loopily visceral, asymmetrical moves become increasingly complex manoeuvres and, with the shadow effects created by lighting designer Chris Davey, the stage becomes a huge, absorbing play of shapes and energies.
Hans van Manen's Visions Fugitives takes its title and structure from Prokofiev's accompanying musical miniatures and explores a different dance idea in each of its 20 sections. Most of the choreography is light, fleet and fantastical, showcasing the pleasure of dance as pure craft and invention. But Van Manen is wary of doing the simple thing. At the end he slips in a nasty little duet where the man, having balanced his partner in a neck hold, apparently strangles her and leaves her for dead. It is hard to know whether Van Manen is punishing himself for being too blithely straightforward or his dancers for having trusted him to play the nice guy.
· Ends Saturday. Box office: 020-7863 8000.
