Of all the good things to say about Russell Maliphant, perhaps the least expected is what a classy dancer he still is. No one doubts his talent as a choreographer but he’s of an age when most dancers have retired and yet at the Coliseum last night he outshone almost everyone.
Maliphant has a hush-lush allure that conjures caryatids and comrades and combatants from thin air. His deceptively simple duets use modern dance and capoeira to play on pace and shift around flow. The dancers echo and challenge and spoof each other, which can be very funny, such as when a dancer gives the impression of doing one thing, only to do something else or nothing at all. You see it in Critical Mass, Maliphant’s duet with Adam Cooper that mixes tango momentum with ritual sparring.
It can also be exhilarating, such as in Two x Two, a duet for Dana Fouras and Daniel Proietto who could be swimmers or gods, or, with Michael Hull’s genius lighting, elemental flashes of sweeping fire.
For this 10-year retrospective, Maliphant has assembled his most ingenious duets. He’s also included Sheer, a pas de deux of unspoken closeness that reminds you how you feel when you’ve loved someone a long time. It’s danced by ballet couple Thomas Edur and Agnes Oaks, who are soon to retire. Seeing them together for what must be one of the last times concentrates the effect.
Until 11 April (0871 911 0200. www.eno.org).
Russell Maliphant
London Coliseum
St Martin's Lane, WC2N 4ES
