Northern Ballet Theatre has taken a bold step away from narrative dance dramas to bring Birgit Scherzer's arresting, abstract work to the UK. It is a powerful, surreal exploration of humankind's dance with death, set to a dramatic rearrangement of Mozart's Requiem.
With its flurries of action for 15 dancers, and not a pointe shoe in sight, the work gives the company the chance to shine as an ensemble. It teems with symbols, such as a giant, rigid overcoat that stands for Mozart's father, and has a fast, quirky and inventive language that hints at Kylian and Graham. Requiem feels so fresh that it is hard to believe it was made in 1991 for the 200th anniversary of Mozart's death.
With the Leeds Festival Chorus and a quartet of soloists augmenting the NBT orchestra, it sounded celestial even before the Grim Reaper led us up the stairway to heaven. Death, danced with stealthy grace by Jonathan Ollivier, is a kind of oriental priest, sporting a black stripe down his face and body to show the division of souls. If life hangs on a thread, here it spins and dangles on ropes that drop down for his victims to climb. Death is suspended above, predatory and relentless.
The piece is in three parts, danced to different permutations of the Requiem. At first, the huddled mass of mankind wander bewildered: grieving, in pain or desperately trying to escape. The second part homes in on Mozart and his relationship with his domineering father and the women in his life. And lastly we see modern man, seemingly hellbent on destruction.
Scherzer is full of surprises, and her images zap you. Black shoes on their hands, the dancers line the walls, sliding along in ranks like weepers on an Elizabethan tomb. Later they drum a tattoo with their heels, as Death beats a slow, rhythmic knell with his fist.
The choreography is tight and needle-sharp. Especially powerful are Christian Broomhall as the young man trying to defy Death and Jonathan Renna, whose character, in a touching, bizarre encounter, invites Death to be scooped up, cradled and coffined in his own case.
· Until Saturday. Box office: 0113-222 6222. Then at the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, from February 25 to March 1. Box office: 0131-529 6000.
