With every work she choreographs, Shobana Jeyasingh raises the bar a little higher; this double bill, featuring two new pieces called Flicker and Transtep, is one of her most challenging yet. But while the beauty and intelligence of the works emerge in proportion to their ambition, so too do their flaws.
One of Jeyasingh's many achievements in Flicker has been to extract a score from Michael Nyman that sounds like nothing else he has ever written. Fed through computerised systems, Nyman's familiar dynamics can still be heard in the music, but its sound has been distilled into a more monochrome world - an electronic heartbeat, the ice-cold splintering of glass.
Into this music Jeyasingh launches her company, like an army of warriors confronting the future of dance. Angling their bodies into tense, hard lines, they brandish a dazzling armoury of steps and gestures, interspersed with flashes of the classical Indian style. This is fast, articulate and daring dance, and it is further complicated by projected images of the seven performers that have been abstracted into buzzing lines and patterns.
But Flicker, with its powerful evocation of a world of information overload and flux, is in danger of being too complex. The dancers' problem is that Jeyasingh's ferociously crafted choreography is sometimes too difficult to execute clearly. The audience's problem is that there isn't a clear enough thread drawing us through the piece; its deliberate open-endedness leaves us dangling.
Transtep begins by promising a simpler ride. The choreography is much more fluid and intimate, allowing us to register the work's internal momentum, as well as its considerable beauties. But halfway through, its electronic score is replaced by a recording of Monteverdi's Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda - and we are wrenched into a different world. This is an extraordinary move, allowing Jeyasingh to play with a contrasting dramatic and musical palette. But because it seems to come from nowhere, we don't have enough time to assimilate the sense of it. As with Flicker, Transtep feels like a puzzle - the kind that leaves you thwarted.
· At the Arc, Stockton on Tees, tomorrow. Box office: 01642 525199.
