Exit No Exit, Gardner Arts Centre, Brighton, <!-- none onestar twostar fourstar fivestar -->
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Your support makes all the difference.In Exit No Exit, the new work by the British-based choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh, two scenarios overlap. The dancer Rathimalar Govindarajoo sits at a table, glaring into space, or gets up to dance. Around her, other dancers perform sequences of steps. Govindarajoo doesn't respond, even when she's picked up and taken off the stage.
The music shows the same kind of division. The composer Michael Nyman, a regular Jeyasingh collaborator, has written a new score for bass clarinet and string quartet. The strings are on tape; the clarinettist, Andy Keenan, plays live.
The danced contrasts are more emphatic. Govindarajoo dances like a woman in a temper, stomping across the stage or breathing out in angry puffs of air. Jeyasingh's choreography draws on the classical Indian style of bharata natyam; this time, there's a hint of a tantrum in those stamped feet.
The dance around her is much lighter, abstract with some touches of playfulness. Dancers fall against their partners, caught and supported at angles. Men and women are picked up, tipped sideways, carried away. Govindarajoo occasionally joins in; more often, she's isolated. Towards the end, she keeps trying to leave the stage. Each time, she's bounced back by another dancer. Here, Jeyasingh's two dances cut sharply across each other, but contrasts blur, or are underlined too firmly.
Lucy Carter's lighting marks out patterns on the floor, suggesting more boundaries. Nichola Bruce's film sequence, projected onto the backdrop, is full of reflections: light bounced off mirrors, water glinting in sunlight, while Ursula Bombshell dresses the dancers in bright tunics - green shot with purple, pink shot with blue.
Exit No Exit is performed with Flicker, the last Nyman-Jeyasingh project. This Nyman score is electronic, interrupted by crackling noise. Again, the dancers are in front of a screen, which flashes lines and scrawls of green light. The patterns, by the design company Digit, are reflections of the dancers; by the end of the piece, the dots have joined up, making dancing shadow-figures.
Touring to 1 April ( www.shobanajeyasingh.co.uk)
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