5/5

In the lull before the storm of her impending retirement Sylvie Guillem reunited with Akram Khan for what could be the last time in Sacred Monsters.

First performed in 2006, the collaborative piece draws on the two very different dance traditions of kathak and ballet in exploring the advent of “the star” in mass culture, be it sporting or artistic, and the attendant media adulation.

There’s a massively sensual connection between the two performers, culminating in a stirring configuration of conjoined bodies, but not before each dancer has occupied and marked out the three dimensions of the stage with their own persona, dynamic physical expression and blindingly fast footwork.

Khan’s opening solo is a wickedly rapid display of the compressed power and energy of tatkar foot rhythms which gives way to Guillem’s gentle counterpoint, distinguished by astonishingly graceful, muscular leg extensions.

The production is interspersed with spoken word and dialogue, revealing both dancers’ search for enlightenment, with Khan recognising the “monster within” as an incitement to the perfection heralded by his adolescent concern about not having hair like Krishna’s.

In a quick-witted sequence, Guillem confesses to a liking for Sally from the Peanuts cartoons and plays with how difficulties with foreign languages can lead to misunderstandings in English.

The delightfully intimate choreography is superseded by nonchalant stand-offs, in turn leading to aggressive battles and the crazed rapture of head-butting.

But it is through the dialogue of symmetrical dance patterns and movement coming together that these phenomenal dancers show such a memorably shared sense of commonality and, at the same time, infatuation with each other’s differences.

Peter Lindley