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The works were all relatively recent: Kylian's Bella Figura, Paul Lightfoot's Speak for Yourself and Johan Inger's Walking Mad. All three have had work shown here before - NDT2 has toured here regularly, and all the NDT companies have featured regularly at the Edinburgh Festival. Kylian works are in Rambert's repertoire.

Kylian's Bella Figura
Photograph by John Ross

Bella Figura is from 1995, for five women and four men, who appear for most of the time in small groups of two or three. The white floor surface for this was deliberately made to facilitate sliding, and the dancers had remarkable skill in controlling their momentum. The skimming over the surface and twirling of the women were occasionally reminiscent of ice dancing - probably not a very PC comparison. But just as in ice dance the lifts were all low, no higher than the shoulder, but very inventive. The work was set to a patchwork of musical fragments and showed a similar variety in its dance language and its costuming. A madly manic section made the dancers appear as if a group of animated out of control clockwork dolls, heighten by the curtains closing around them as if in a puppet show. This was then followed by an abrupt change to all dancers in long red skirts with their torsos bare - formal and grave, like a series of pagan priestesses. Not altogether satisfying as a coherent whole, but still possessing some fascinating moments.

Paul Lightfoot's previous works had been quirky and odd but compelling. Speak for Yourself was perhaps not so convincing. It opens with one solo dancer who has a smoke canister strapped to his back: as he dances, the smoke swirls and forms its own shapes. Later, after being joined by more dancers, the stage is drenched with rain, and the dancers dance and slide though the puddles it produces. The lighting effects through the smoke and rain are effective, but the design and the effects maybe tend to overpower the dance itself (they certainly left the corporate crowd somewhat open mouthed). The dance itself seemed heavily influenced by Kylian here ( more dancers walking slowly towards the backcloth into which they disappear) and less individual and distinctive. The women were particularly fine in this (Shirley Essenboom, Sol Leon, Nancy Euverink).

John Inger's Walking Mad (wall!)
Photograph by John Ross

On the other hand, I was much more impressed by Johan Inger's Walking Mad than I had been by his earlier work. Here the design was a strong element, but quite distinctly part of the work, integrated into it. The set is a long wooden fence, with door through which dancers appear or disappear, or climb over: if flexes, bends, collapses to become a platform for dancing on. When I saw this work was set to Bolero I winced inwardly: how was anyone going to make anything to this without falling into melodrama or cliché. But Inger has made a warm and unexpectedly funny work with some curious little skirmishes in the battle of the sexes taking place - madcap chases and quirky manoeuvrings. I was less convinced of the final passage, to different music, a more angst-ridden duet, but the previous section was entertaining and inventive. Again, a really polished and professional performance by the dancers, met with a fond reception by the audience.