Russell Maliphant embraces abstract expressionism in Vortex at Sadler’s Wells

With enough awards to stock a pawnbroker’s window, Russell Maliphant could be excused for resting on his laurels. Yet at 61 he continues to make new work despite the loss of his Arts Council funding during the last round of belt-tightening. His latest piece, Vortex, had its London premiere on Wednesday at Sadler’s Wells, where Maliphant has been an associate artist since 2005.

Visual art has often inspired Maliphant’s writing. AfterLight (2009), a dazzling, dervishing solo for Daniel Proietto, gave physical expression to the obsessive-compulsive circles and spirals drawn by Vaslav Nijinsky during bouts of mental illness. The Rodin Project (2012) breathed life into the recurring figures in Auguste Rodin’s sculptures. For Vortex, the stimulus is the canvases and working practice of Jackson Pollock. There is no literal enactment of “action painting”; instead Maliphant uses the fusion of movement, light and scenic effects to create his own brand of abstract expressionism.

The wide Sadler’s Wells stage is dominated by a vast wooden screen on wheels that acts as a surface for projections and shadow-play and can be tip-tilted through various angles to provide a climbing wall or surfboard for the dancers to navigate. This hyperactive “canvas” injects some welcome variety into the staging, but the constant business of wheeling it around and rejigging the slope is distracting (and rather noisy).

Gorgeous imagery though. The second half in particular contains several captivating sequences, notably when the dancers manipulate a 30ft billow of chiffon that curls and bellies through the air like a topsail in a high wind and supplies a home for Ryan Joseph Stafford’s prismatic lighting. The other big photo opportunity comes when a sling descends from the flies to distribute a fine rain of silver sand. The whirling sandbag deposits concentric circles on the floor and a whole weather system is created above the dancers’ heads when the particles are blown into cloud formations by a handheld electric fan.

Such ravishing scenic trickery would hugely enrich a performance of The Tempest, say, or Peter Grimes, but Maliphant’s trademark moves — wheeling arms, tornadoes of turns — are in danger of being upstaged by such special effects. The piano-based soundtrack by seasoned dance composer Katya Richardson was written in tandem with the movement but neither drives nor inspires it and seems an oddly bland match for the jazzy vitality of Pollock’s canvases, which cry out for the creative anarchy of Charlie Parker or Thelonious Monk.

Maliphant’s CV shows the sheer range of his influences. After seven years with the old Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet he switched to contemporary dance, performing with DV8, Michael Clark and the great Laurie Booth, master of “structured improvisation”. Although many genres — ballet, capoeira, tai chi, hip-hop — have coloured his work, Maliphant somehow homogenises those disciplines. The result is invariably fluent, polished and handsome but can be strangely flavourless.

His writing is seen at its best on the bodies of performers whose personalities are a match for their technique — Proietto, Dana Fouras, Sylvie Guillem. The five young dancers of Vortex are all highly accomplished but risk becoming anonymous components in the well-oiled Maliphant mechanism.

★★★☆☆

To May 5, sadlerswells.com