© John Ross 'Blow Over' reviews 'Shuffle it Right' reviews Richard Alston 'The Men in my Life' reviews Goddard in reviews Lawrence in RA reviews recent Richard Alston reviews more Jane Simpson reviews Discuss this review (Open for at least 6 months) Gallery of Photographs

We started with the first London performance of Shuffle it Right, first seen in Canterbury earlier this year. It's one of Alston's lighthearted pieces, following on from the gorgeous Devil in the Detail, and set to tracks of Hoagy Carmichael performing his own music. They're mostly not polished concert versions - there are hesitations, comments, restarts, all reflected in the choreography; Alston has reacted to the 'speed and lightness' of the music with some brilliant writing, especially for the wondrous Jonathan Goddard, who is given some virtuoso steps to do and dances them with a breathtakingly casual precision. The structure of the piece, again like the music, is mildly idiosyncratic, and it ends oddly, on an emotional dwonbeat, with a solo for Anneli Binder set to Stardust.

The central section of the evening was called The Men in My Life, and consisted of nine pieces - from short extracts to a complete work - which Alston has made for male dancers, or as he puts it himself, 'for men who in some way took my work to a new place'. With that description in mind, look at the names of some of these men: Darshan Singh Buller, Arthur Pita, Martin Lawrence, Michael Clark, Henri Oguike, Ben Ash - choreographers now, every one of them. Coincidence? Surely not. It's not coincidence, either, that the most outstanding performances in this retrospective came from the dancers recreating their own roles: Jason Piper, in a stylised, almost ritualistic solo from Water Music, Goddard in the recent Fingerprint (and impressing as well in the fabulous Dutiful Ducks, made for Michael Clark), and Martin Lawrence in an extract from Shimmer. None of these three dances with the RADC any more (Goddard has just joined Rambert), but the current male line-up looks sharp and stylish, and Pierre Tappon for instance made a fine shot at a piece from Alston's Movements from Petrushka.

After all this Blow Over, the new piece, seemed almost an anticlimax. Alston has used two of the Songs for Liquid Days by Philip Glass as settings for two sections contrasted both in speed and in mood. There's an interesting duet in both halves, and some committed dancing from Tappon and Wayne Parsons among others; but the costumes are unattractive and the lyrics difficult to make out. Maybe another look on a less emotional night will reveal more in the piece, and meanwhile Alston had a very warm and affectionate reception, and a party and a cake to follow.