O4 is four new pieces for 04, three by international guest choreographers, one by artistic director Darshan Singh Bhuller, and put together they are as multi-cultural as the company of nine dancers.

Work 01, a new commission from 1997 Jerwood Award winner Henri Oguike entitled Signal, opens the night to the clattering and imposing rhythms of Japanese Taiko drums.

More than any of the other works in O4, there is osmosis between music and dance steps, working in rhythmic tandem against a minimalist backdrop of dawn grey then heart-pumping red.

The combative, athletic choreography is intricate and surprising, even deliciously odd in its choice of movement, which combines delicate slow, arching poise with sudden bursts of circular running.

Repetition gives Signal the feel of containment and ritual, freedom always tantalizingly out of reach.

By comparison, nothing is held back in Can You See Me, the playful choreographic contribution of Rui Horta, who invited a quartet of Phoenix dancers to swap the December chill of Leeds for a liberating month at his Portuguese dance studio. Horta takes as his inspiration the primal music of Jimi Hendrix at his flashiest, performing Can You See Me at Monterey.

The choreography likes to show off too, theatrical and melodramatic in facial and bodily expression, briefly humorous when Yann Seabra waits for Hendrix to stop fiddling around, but the bursts of dynamic dancing merely fill out the day, ultimately adding up to empty gestures.

Post-interval, Seabra and Lisa Welham follow up an awkward duet in Horta's piece with a poetic and tender exploration of relationships in Darshan Singh Bhuller's Source 2, danced to Gyorgy Kurtag's hypnotic quartets. Last year's Source had mulled over man's reliance on water, and the sound of rain introduces a sequel danced to the accompaniment of black and white photographic projections by Anthony Crickmay, which echo the movement on stage.

Bhuller's meditations have moved on to reliance on each other, a union of touch and need that ultimately leads to Seabra and Welham dancing naked in discreet semi-light. Bhuller's application of yoga-stretching exercises in his serene choreography is an amusing delight.

The comedic ensemble piece of the night, by German-born Maresa Von Stockert, is kept until last and its dark surrealist humour lingers long after the final curtain. Polysterene Dreams echoes Charlie Chaplin in his factory in Modern Times; here there are two huge tables and office swivel chairs, toy cars and battery-operated baby dolls in a toy factory where the production line seeks release from robotic order and oppressive management announcements into a world of daydreams. Experience Polysterene Dreams and you will never see swivel chairs in the same light again.

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Updated: 11:47 Tuesday, March 09, 2004