Shobana Jeyasingh's latest double bill shows her at a fascinating point of transition. Exit No Exit, which she created last season, has the feel of a choreographer in search of a subject. While its abstract powerplay between soloist and ensemble contains all the intelligence and invention you'd expect from Jeyasingh, and is superbly performed, Exit No Exit remains a fuzzy piece, which never gets to the heart of its own argument.
In contrast, every moment in Jeyasingh's latest creation, Faultline, feels necessary. Its starting point is Gautam Malkhani's novel Londonstani, that raucous portrait of British Asian youth. The opening trio of male dancers registers instantly as an edgy and glamorous portrait of a multicultural generation. Dancing classical bharata natyam with a scintilla of rap, these guys embody a 21st-century Babel.
Jeyasingh keeps this tension in play when she filters in the rest of her nine dancers, until a different dynamic is created by the entrance of the Indian soprano Patricia Rosario. In a capsule of black-and-white film images, singing the rich music of Errollyn Wallen, Rosario appears like an implacable goddess. It is too glib to suggest that she represents the old culture, yet there is something about the pure sound of her voice that distils a sense of home, both desirable and threatening. Jeyasingh, who has made her career treading between western and Asian traditions, knows exactly how to give this the fullest resonance.
· At the Sherman, Cardiff, on March 20, then touring. Box office: 029-2064 6900.
