Landscape Review – Russell Maliphant’s mesmerizing and meditative works of dance and light | Dance

WWatching Danielle Proyto dance Afterlight has to be one of the best ways you can spend 15 minutes. This gorgeous piece of dance is the antidote to overstimulation: a single, smooth thread of movement delicately woven across the spare piano strings of Erik Satie’s Gnossiennes. As Proietto spins in deep backbends bathed in a pool of light, he resembles a dying swan of the 21st century.

This evening’s work by choreographer Russell Maliphant consists of just three solo pieces. With Maliphant, there is nothing superfluous, everything is deliberate: every movement, every pause, every flash of light; Never more than required. Maliphant is a Royal Ballet dancer who also studied martial arts and creates mesmerizing, meditative works of dance and light in synthesis (lighting designers Michael Hales and Panagiotis Tomaras are a key part of the creative process).

For fans, this show comes with a wave of nostalgia. Afterlight was made for a Diaghilev-inspired evening at Sadler’s Wells in 2009. Another single dating back even further, Two, was created in 1997 originally for Maliphant’s wife, Dana Fouras, performed here by Alina Cojocaru.