Age before beauty? Nuts to that. You can, in fact, have both.
Russell Maliphant turns 65 this autumn. His Dance Company’s new triple bill, Landscapes, boasts three marvellous solos (all by him) and three marvellous dancers – and he is one of them. What’s more, he continues to move with a grace that would put most people one third of his age to shame.
A hotshot student at the Royal Ballet School in the early 1980s, Maliphant soon tired of classicism, embarking upon a lifelong exploration of the myriad possibilities of the human body moving through light. En route, he developed a dance vocabulary as unique as a fingerprint, one that intertwines ballet, contemporary dance, tai-chi, capoeira and more into a luxuriantly fluid and organic whole. That the Arts Council completely pulled his funding in 2023 is a perfect sign of their idiocy.
Two jewel-like pieces open the evening. Created in 2009, Afterlight is a tender paean to that troubled wonder of a dancer, Vaslav Nijinsky, playing out to Erik Satie’s Gnossiennes, and here delectably performed by Daniel Proietto. Proietto’s subtly imploring, near-perpetual movement and Michael Hulls’s dappled, pulsating lighting build an impression of someone barely of this world, flitting in and out of reality, ultimately spiralling into painfully solitary oblivion. It’s pure, forlorn magic.
The next piece is not even 10 minutes long, but perhaps better still. Maliphant created Two for his wife, Dana Fouras, way back in 1997, whereupon it instantly established itself as a modern masterpiece. Like Proietto, Alina Cojocaru is 44 – a toddler next to Maliphant, but nevertheless getting on in “dance years”. However, you still cannot take your eyes off her. Here, standing in a plinth-like square of light (also by Hulls, Maliphant’s long-time collaborator), the former Royal Ballet superstar is the Pygmalion-like statue apparently come to life. As Andy Cowton’s synth pulse builds, she slowly explores her newfound ability to move, then lets rip with an astonishing, retina-challenging salvo of flickers of arms and legs.
Maliphant takes to the stage after the interval to deliver the evening’s most substantial piece, In a Landscape. After the spare perfection of its two predecessors, this textile-laden 2025 creation can’t help coming across as a bit over-stretched, but it is still full of sorcery.
It begins with him behind a gauze of some kind, Panagiotis Tomaras’s lighting allowing us only tantalising snapshots of his movement. But the gauze turns out to be a curtain, which Maliphant soon transforms into a dance partner of sorts, while at other points ingeniously using a simpler drape and multiple lighting points to appear to dance with and even comfort himself. Elsewhere, the swath of fabric also becomes something between the undulating landscapes of the title and the aurora borealis.
Perhaps most impressive of all, though, are the more pared-down but physically demanding passages in which Maliphant simply dances. His strength, speed and attack are still astounding, and he clearly has a core of pure titanium – two stand-out sections come across as yoga and pilates alchemised into art, which I mean only as a compliment.
So, come on: don’t make Sadler’s regret its brave decision to stage this at its new Stratford outpost as opposed to its more financially dependable base in Angel. Wednesday’s first night sold well, but too many tickets are still available for the next three nights. Invest in one, and I promise you will understand what that hackneyed expression “poetry in motion” really means.
At Sadler’s Wells East until March 14; sadlerswells.com