Stephen Petronio and Rufus Wainwright team effort reviewed.

Bud Suite/Bloom/The Rite Part

The Black Box, Galway

Stephen Petronio and Rufus Wainwright, what a combination they make. The first half of Stephen Petronio's triple bill - developed both with existing Wainwright music (Bud Suite) then in collaboration with him (Bloom) - presents an energetic programme with a mercurial and undulating sheen of silk.

Two dancers wearing mirrored halves of a men's suit opened the show as Wainwright's voice crooned about "men reading fashion magazines", their smooth athletic partnership laced with a hint of Ravel's Boléro.

Known for vigorous choreography that keeps moving, Petronio's dancers, including Amanda Wells (below left), display immense versatility as they stiffen into missile-like balletic shapes, then soften again, often twisting like melting candles into fleeting shapes you couldn't imagine a human making. Bloom, featuring Wainwright's music to the poems of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, feels like a benediction, with Wainwright's voice multiplied into a recorded choir and dancers darting and spinning like winged seeds in the wind.

The wind changes with The Rite Part, a section of Petronio's earlier production of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. Still fluid, but now tortured, the dancers often contort their hard, demanding gestures with spasms that give their limbs a broken, splintered look.

That twisting melt transforms to make the dancers appear as though each section of their torso revolves around a separate axis, as different segments spin in time lapse behind others. Some dancers push and subjugate others, who writhe in resignation on the floor; with their sweaty contours catching the light, they look like defeated demons. In a cone of spotlight, dancer Shila Tirabassi powers through the final solo. Animated by a lusty, uncivilised energy, she presides over the other prostrated dancers at the end like a defiant divinity.

Apart from the superb dancing and choreography, the design elevates the production into the sublime.

Unfussy and powerful in its apparent simplicity, the expressive lighting by Burke Wilmore and costumes by Tara Subkoff and H Petal (Bud Suite), Rachel Roy (Bloom) and Manolo (The Rite Part) add to the delight of this triple bill. More please.

Runs until Sat

Christine Madden