Vortex review: Russell Maliphant recreates Jackson Pollock’s paintings through dance

Choreographer’s production is a little clunky, but features gorgeous vignettes

For ‘Vortex’, Russell Maliphant and lighting designer Ryan Joseph Stafford layer dappled light over the dancers (Roswitha Chesher)

Russell Maliphant’s new Vortex digs into the paintings of Jackson Pollock – from evoking his imagery on stage, to the very physical process of creating it. Maliphant’s beautifully fluid moves are set against light that lies like thick impasto paint, or against shimmers of falling sand. There’s some clunky stagecraft in getting those contrasts set up, but some gorgeous stage pictures, too.

Maliphant has always been drawn to light, and often to visual artists. Past works include responses to the sculptures of Rodin and the line drawings of Nijinsky, as well as award-winning collaborations with Sylvie Guillem. When he frames his dancers in stripes or boxes of light, the movement can recall a drawn line against darkness.

For Vortex, Maliphant and lighting designer Ryan Joseph Stafford layer dappled light over the dancers and a series of props. Gold-lit limbs unwind in front of a tipped plane of wood, suggesting a giant easel. One sequence of shadows looks like a forest, or like the rumpled textures of a finished Pollock painting. As they move through it, the cast of five seem to flicker, like an old film. Later, they create the same jittery effect in full light, like an illusion that turns out to be real. Katya Richardson’s score is percussive but gentle, with prepared piano and pattering sound.

Other sequences have too much setup. A huge steel table glints and tips, requiring a lot of management and audible clanking to get it into position. The dancers evoke “drip” paintings by playing with a bucket on a line, but the sequence sags, like an overlong game.

Russell Maliphant’s dance company in ‘Vortex' (Roswitha Chesher)

Replacing imagined paint with real sand, Maliphant creates wonderful effects. Paris Crossley, a popper and hip-hop dancer who joined the company for Vortex, stands under a shower of sand, her limbs floating and curling in dreamy lines. The sand falls in a glinting spiral around her, as if she had conjured up her own personal Northern Lights.

In another sequence, dancers run and pull at a billowing sheet of gauze. Stafford lights it like stained glass, while the fabric seems to have a life of its own, like the Art Nouveau draperies of the dancer Loie Fuller. Maliphant’s choreography is full of long phrases, movement that flows through the body like a strong, slow current. Here, it’s matched by the floating lines of cloth, both hanging in the air.

Sadler’s Wells Theatre, until 5 May