You won’t find steps in Russell Maliphant’s choreography, so much as one seamless swirling and spooling flow, one impulse morphing into another, all in fusion with dramatic light. Greek video designer Panagiotis Tomaras offers rippling projections cast across five dancers’ bodies, emulating close-ups of cells and muscle fibres connecting to the choreographer’s theme, the inner workings of the body – something that Maliphant, trained in anatomy and body work techniques as well as classical ballet, is deeply involved with.
What emerges is a slow and concentrated Zen-like energy, as if the brain’s alpha waves were made flesh, across a succession of lighting states. Some of them are transfixing: a molten solo for Grace Jabbari is lit by flickers like neural networks, synapses firing or pulses through veins. The deft young dancers move with ninja stealth. Even an athletic barrel turn or flying kick is silently blended into the thread. It’s as if the dancers are absorbed by the movement rather than it being something they project. And anonymity reigns; this is dance about bodies, not people.
There’s shifting complexity within the repetitive currents of the choreography, but it can very easily all look the same, underlined by the unimaginative looping of some of the score (there’s a distinct 90s trip-hop vibe going on). Silent Lines is less a journey somewhere, more a study of stasis, moving yet staying in place, like the vibrating matter of the universe – you can get a bit cosmic with this stuff, there’s even a swirling Milky Way at one point. If you can catch a ride on Maliphant’s flow, you’ll find this a sublime and trancelike hour, otherwise things could get painfully samey.
