The Place Prize may have been judged by an unorthodox mix of public and private voting, but the five works that have ended up in its Finals programme make for a serious night of dance. One reason for its success is the colourful range of styles embraced by the entries - the other is that all have been limited to 15 minutes.
Rarely has a dance event boasted such focus. At one extreme is Rosemary Butcher's Hidden Voices, which is restricted to one dancer, Elena Gianotti, running rhythmically, on the spot. As she runs, Gianotti reacts to changing lights and sounds - her face screwed nervously, her arms stretched wide or dangling. These tiny modulations create a disproportionately large effect, as if Gianotti were embarked on an epic life journey, but it's still a tribute to her concentrated performance that she survives being in the same programme as Tom Roden and Pete Shenton. The current target of these absurd and brilliant debunkers of postmodern dance is the concept of stillness.
At the opposite extreme is Hofesh Shechter's dark and dystopian Cult, in which six dancers crowd in flickering patterns, blasted by a rhetorical soundtrack that is part Old Testament part Nuremberg rally. The piece occasionally struggles with its own symbolism but it is lit and staged to suggest a drama of ambitious reach. Impressively large, too, is Bawren Tavaziva's Umdlalo Kasisi whose rich fluid structures build seamlessly to evoke currents of love and loss.
Rafael Bonachela by contrast seems to have set his sights disappointingly low in E2 7SD. No one familiar with the works he's made for Rambert would dispute Bonachela's talent, but despite the slippery urgency of this duet's manoeuvres, it visits old ground. Still, it's Bonachela's choreography, along with Cult that's been getting the largest share of audience votes so far. As for the judges, we will have to wait till Saturday to find out who they've selected for the first of the big Place awards.
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