Russell Maliphant company

As part of a Diaghilev celebration last year, Russell Maliphant presented AfterLight, a meditation on the work of Nijinsky, whose blazing career as a dancer was tragically halted by schizophrenia. Set to Eric Satie's haunting Gnossiennes suite, the piece saw Daniel Proietto whirling beneath a dying spotlight in a stream of movement that incorporated fleeting moments from the great Nijinsky ballets. There, as the darkness closed about him, was the Spectre of the Rose, the Faun, the Golden Slave. Exquisitely sad, and sublimely danced by Proietto, AfterLight was a miniature masterpiece. And while one can understand Maliphant's impulse to expand it into a full evening work, the results are disappointing. He introduces two female dancers, Silvina Cortés and Olga Cobos, who dip and skim in diaphanous shifts, and although crafted with typical Maliphant precision, this new material is inconsequential and ultimately soporific. Andy Cowton's score, meanwhile, fights a losing battle with the memory of the Satie.