Choreographer
Sylvie Guillem
Russell Maliphant
Lighting
Michael Hulls
Music
Shirley Thompson
Andrew Cowton
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Push
Sadler's Wells
30 Sept - 3 Oct 2005
Sylvie Guillem and the choreographer-dancer Russell Maliphant could not be more different: she the sinewy, athletic, turbo-charged danceuse, with the best sense of line and phrase in the business, visibly testing her limits - if not dance's limits - with almost every movement; he a much stiller, more stately, presence, by temperament and artistic style, rather than on account of his 42 years.
Yet their balletic chemistry is astounding. They have so much to say to each other - in Push they are constantly testing, fighting, circling around, staring at, or fleeing from, each other - that it is easy to forget that three of these four magnificent pieces by Maliphant are solos, two for her, one for him. Even when on-stage alone they still seem to be exploring the complex charge between them as powerfully and as spontaneously as when they are together.
Their expressiveness is so intense that they barely need to move to bowl us over. Maliphant's daring choreography is frequently one of quiet centredness, of the minutest gesture, of the perfectly sculpted pose, clearly inspired by tai-chi and yoga and the martial arts as well as by classical movement. And then it mutates into the wildest maneuvers, especially in the duo, where Guillem hurls herself spinning into his arms, unfolds herself down his back, forges herself into a flying pose over his head, and even holds him in her arms as she had previously been held in his.
Everything about Guillem's and Maliphant's dancing is driven by an intelligence that is supple, bold, imaginative and tenacious. And Maliphant's choreography lets us enjoy Guillem's almost impossibly elongated torso and limbs to the full. In Two, a solo made for her, she is rooted to a small rectangle of light, where she slowly folds and unfolds and twists her upper body and arms, as if testing what they can do. Then her explorations and confidence gather momentum and suddenly she is hurling her limbs and torso around in great loops with ferocious power. Her range is astonishing; it is impossible to forget that this same body can also dramatise Giselle with incomparable finesse.
The ingenious lighting of Michael Hulls does not simply illuminate the dancing; it is part of it - in Shift, Maliphant's solo for himself, literally so. Here Hull's lighting casts two shadows of Maliphant on screens behind him, which are cleverly positioned so that the shadow figures not only dance in synchrony with him but also exit and enter the stage as if of their volition.
Simon May
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