There is a t'ai chi command, quoted in Cloud Gate's programme, that describes the state to which this company's dancers aspire - a state in which "energy flows like water, while the spirit shines like the moon". Even though choreographer Lin Hwai-min brings years of modern-dance training to Cloud Gate, it is these zen-like qualities of fluidity and calm that make his work so ravishing to western eyes.
In each of Moon Water's eight sections, set to music from Bach's Suites for Solo Cello, a single current of energy runs, unbroken, through the dancers' bodies. It flutters weightlessly within an exquisitely rotating wrist; it crumples into a fall; it charges up a high martial kick or lunge. And even when the dynamics of the choreography turn agitated or extreme, the movement maintains an inner detachment that makes these dancers appear to be touch with forces larger than themselves.
The extraordinary physical skills of Moon Water's cast are pleasure enough, but the staging is equally hypnotic. Chang Tsan-tao's lighting bathes the stage in a shining radiance, while the white-clad dancers move between dark shadows and reflected surfaces. Within Lin's choreography, there is a similarly luminous patterning at work, as a single impulse of movement ripples through a solo dancer and is amplified through the gently massed ensemble.
The "narrative" of this work may simply be its gradual accumulation of contrast and detail, but it reaches a stunning climax as the floor slowly floods with water and reflections of the dancing bodies settle and scatter, splash and reform. By the end of this 70-minute piece, the dancers are no longer confined to a moonlit stage but seem to be voyaging over the surface of some magnificent, watery planet.
· Ends tonight. Box office: 0844 412 4300. Then touring.
