Groundbreaking Belgian-born interdisciplinary choreographer Frederic Flamand, the collaboration of Brazilian designer brothers Humberto and Fernando Campana, and the dancers of France's second-top company have created an intellectually rigorous work as well as a show as spectacular as any modern ballet I have seen.

Flamand has philosophically examined nine of Ovid's rebellious and chaos-igniting Metamorphoses, and viewed and presented them in a way that allows them to question quite probingly where humankind is now. He visits Ovid's Greek myths of Phaethon, Perseus and the Medusa, Pegasus, Diana and Actaeon, Narcissus, Pallas and Arachne, and Medea's quest for youth.

The dancers have added their own interpretational movement, which incorporates and sometimes interacts directly with the Campanas' mainly circular sculptures, and their dramatic costumic additions.

Frustratingly the music is not named but is of often deeply reverberant and percussive electronic and sound is supplemented later on by unexpected conventional instruments, including piano duo, an interwoven sequence of Saint-Saens' Swan (cello and piano) during Cygnus, and latterly at the work's climax, a Baroque chamber group featuring familiar Italian and (Bach) German works.

For the full review click here for the Dance section
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