Over the years, Richard Alston's dancers have performed to some of the world's greatest musical scores. But they have also appeared in some of the dullest costumes, which makes Julien Macdonald's contribution to Alston's work Shimmer even more of a fashion event than it first appears.
True to form, Macdonald has produced a wardrobe of delicately meshed, intricately jewelled tunics for the nine dancers (male and female alike). His colours are outrageous - and perfect - but more magically still, these costumes settle around the dancers' bodies like live skin, adding a shape-shifting airiness to Alston's choreography.
The score for Shimmer is piano music by Ravel, and there are moments when Alston's blunt-edged style could seem too solid for its drift and glitter. But as atoms of colour spark off Macdonald's costumes, lines of dance are refracted into dazzling streaks, and when the dancers work in close duets they seem to embrace a glancing, protean light.
Much of the choreography is beautiful on its own terms. Alston finds pools of mysterious emotion in the music, which he encloses in gently askance duets. He stills the choreography into off-kilter pauses, then lets it fly on exuberant, full-bodied trajectories. Martin Lawrance is wonderful here; so, too, is his partner, Sonja Peedo. At first sight Peedo appears a mild, even reticent dancer, yet she moves with a depth of rhythm and a heroic range that give a massive emotional charge to the choreography.
They are the best of a very fine company that can dance everything that is asked of them. The shiningly articulate Brisk Singing has never looked finer (though Rameau's music was badly over-amped), and the other new work of the season, Overdrive, was a pure romp.
Propelling the choreography are currents of swinging striding dance that ride alongside Terry Riley's score. In one middle section, the choreography feels too compliantly close to the music, but during the second half it's magisterial. Solos turn up fascinating counterpoints of rhythm and shape in the score, and when all 11 dancers are on stage, drilling through a seemingly endless variety of configurations, the power alliance between dance and music does, as promised, go into overdrive.
· Until tomorrow. Box office: 0870 737 7737. Then touring.
