Russell Maliphant’s dance is rooted in ideas of energy and flow, and he’s best known for exploring the beguiling interplay between bodies and light. His latest piece, Vortex, stays true to all those things, while moving in some new directions.
One early scene is typical Maliphant, with lighting designer Ryan Joseph Stafford casting striped light across the dancers’ bodies, as if in the thick of a bamboo forest. Their figures are abstracted, pure motion rather than people, and suitably hypnotic; the smooth, deep curves and spirals of Maliphant’s choreography flickering.
