Dance: Russian steps

SASHA PEPELYAEV

THE PLACE LONDON

NOTE THE name: Sasha Pepelyaev. On Tuesday he became the first Russian contemporary dance choreographer to show his work in Britain.

It proved fascinating. His Kinetic Theatre has few outside models. After the Russian Revolution, he says, people had no heat, hardly any food, yet there were 300 dance studios in Moscow.

Now, while Russian ballet looks to the past, he is trying to build a new tradition. Surprisingly, he cites modern literature as his chief inspiration. He himself speaks with quiet intensity in a text by Dmitry Prigov, The View of the Russian Grave from Germany, although one of the other three dancers in his talented group also tries to be heard, and supplants him at the very end.

A translation is provided, but these words do not really tell the story, which is concerned with fear in human contacts. The movements convey it - a mix of stylised gesture and the sort of half-remembered folk dance people attempt after too many drinks. Blindfolds and a small wooden bell also play their part.

Pepelyaev had more to come, and even better. Violators of Disorders is performed by teachers and pupils from the Contemporary Dance School at the Yekaterinburg Centre of Modern Art. The text is by by Stanislav Shulyak, but there is no need to understand Russian to get the point. Yevgeny Martianov, trying to tell a story, is challenged by the anarchic activities of a group of children, their hair freaked into provocative shapes and colours. A very self-possessed little boy with green hair, Stanislav Chmeline, takes up the story for a while and leads the cast into the revels that almost end the work but the final act is left to a woman who has tried to give the kids a ballet class. She bourrees in, strikes beautiful poses, but then disappears into the dark: doubtless a metaphor for the effect Pepelyaev hopes his work will have on all conventionally stultified dance. He deserves luck to match his courage and talent.