Push

The Lowry
Thursday 24th April

Push is a collaborative non-classical ballet by legendary French dancer Sylvie Guillem and choreographer Russell Maliphant. The show comprises of three solo dances: two by Guillem interrupted by Maliphant’s ‘Shift’.

The second dance features the incredible lighting design of Michael Hulls in which a harsh, double silhouette encapsulates the ‘real’ Maliphant as he moves in sync with his two imposing and stunning shadows. But it is the final piece of dance, a duet which lends itself to the title of the compendium, that made Maliphant’s show such a success when first premiered at Sadler’s Wells in 2005, and which does not fail to continue to dazzle audiences today. Push is a hypnotic and intense duet: a thirty-minute feast of fervid, affecting and altogether asphyxiating contemporary ballet.

Guillem and Maliphant are dressed in white avant-garde designs throughout the show. This sleek, bright garb provides the inimitable contrast between svelte, powerful limb and the encircling darkness of the vast stage. With such attention to every technical aspect, we are indulged with incredible effects; be it the swirling of Guillem’s body (dizzying flashes of muscle so accelerated that you are forced to question whether what you are seeing is illusion or reality), or the mesmerising, impassioned sound track of Carlos Montoya’s Spanish guitar.

Maliphant’s choreography is classical and yet set within a completely alien setting. What we see needs no affiliation with a particular time in history, nor a particular place. Besides, Guillem and Maliphant remain identity-less, unexplained figures inhabiting a space totally unspecific. Yet despite all this, their movements are plagued with narrative, with meaning.

As audiences, we must mimic what we see. As the dancers travel as graceful blurs of white hypnotised by light and sound, so must we allow our selves to be totally hypnotised, our minds blurred, so that we too might become immersed in this intimate, original, and astonishing story of dance.

9/10