Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet

Alhambra Theatre, Bradford

4 Stars

Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet made its British debut last year and it's just finished touring again with a thrilling mixed programme.

The New York-based company, equal parts contemporary dance and ballet, excels in blurring the boundaries between the two and that's best demonstrated with Jiri Kylian's Indigo Rose.

Divided into four different musical sections, the piece passes through youthful vibrancy, moodiness and loss. It's an emotional journey reflected in the staging, with the set bisected first by a rope and then a white silk sheet that allows for witty shadow play that distorts perspective.

That sense of humour underpins all of the company's work, even on a piece as tense as Crystal Pite's Ten Duets On A Theme Of Rescue, where the action - forced into a narrow area of light by a broken semi-circle of spotlights - evokes the claustrophobic feel of a prison yard.

The mood is increased by Cliff Martinez's minimal, spacey score for the 2002 remake of the film Solaris as a series of couples weave in and out of one another's personal space.

Alternately dangerous and tender, it's undercut by a constant narrative of melancholy. The highlight is a sequence in which a woman marches obliviously forward while a man runs furiously on the spot trying to reach her outstretched hand, finely balancing humour with utter poignancy.

That mood's banished by Jo Stromgren's quasi-absurdist Necessity, Again. The evening's most theatrical piece, it sees the stage littered with pieces of paper while snippets of dialogue by French philosopher Jacques Derrida contrast with the cheesy pop of Charles Aznavour.

The 10 dancers variously romp, lasciviously duet on a wooden table, strip down to their underwear and celebrate the physical joy of movement.

While lacking the emotional depth of the two previous pieces, it's an undeniable party piece and crowd pleaser, lifting the mood of the evening at the close.

Susan Darlington