There's a pleasing sense of history about the two latest additions to Rambert's repertory. While Curious Conscience marks the end of Rafael Bonachela's three-years as associate choreographer, A Steel Garden marks Christopher Bruce's first reunion with the company since he retired as artistic director in 2002. And what completes the symmetry is the fact that both works take their choreographers to distinctively new places, especially Bonachela, who has never before worked on such a large scale or to such demanding music.
Curious Conscience is created for 18 dancers, set to Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings. For the first time Bonachela has given himself scope to vary the texture and dramatise the pattern of his choreography, and it takes the hard choppy lines of his style to a new level.
What powers the piece is a frank visceral response to the dreamy, death-besotted text of Britten's score. Surrounded by threatening darkness, the dancers are orchestrated together in a fast and fatalistic denial of the music's call to mortality. The rare moments when they slow down, yielding to Britten's floating lines and losing themselves in his weird tonal slippages, have the heady quality of a death swoon. Dramatically and visually, the piece makes a brilliant grab for our attention. However, its weakness - evidence of Bonachela's inexperience - is that it fights the score too hard. While step for step this is easily the best piece he's made, it comes at Britten's expense.
By contrast Bruce places his work literally inside the music, his stage hung with chimes and gongs which the eight dancers play as they move. Initially this conceit looks doomed - dancers aren't musicians and the hanging instruments limit their scope. But 10 minutes into the piece, the choreography zeroes in on two subtly impassioned duets whose fusion of deep resonant power and silvered surface exactly catch the tone of David C Heath's music, and from that point on it blossoms on a high of floating lifts and Dionysian rhythms. This hot, strange piece is mysteriously affecting in a style quite different from Bruce's recent output. Rambert's dancers, who are currently on astonishing, blazing form, look beautiful within it.
· Until Saturday. Box office: 0870 737 7737. Then touring.
