Rambert: Draw from Within review – dancing this intense could spark a blaze

W hen Rambert premiered their lockdown livestream Draw from Within in September, by Belgian choreographer Wim Vandekeybus, it was a pandemic dance highlight. Back then we were so thirsty for new art and live events, even on screen. Now that same show has been adapted for the stage, how does it stand up?

In this format, we miss the intimacy of the camera and the cinematic sleight of hand Vandekeybus employed on screen, but the content is largely the same. There’s the dancing with smoke sticks, daubing paint on the walls, and a woman spawning a man-child who rides a tricycle. There are ropes pulled across the stage that the performers leap through like Tom Cruise dodging laser beams in Mission: Impossible, and many unfathomable thematic shifts in unexpected directions (this is Belgian dance theatre, after all).

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Such gimmickry pales in significance when what this show has above all is incredible dancing. The company are on fire, all that live energy vibrating across the auditorium in jerks, quirks and sudden expulsions, then fluid tumbles of unspooling movement. There’s a transfixing Liam Francis leaping and looping in weightless, aqueous flow; the sharp moves of Juan Gil, with added flamenco sass; and Aishwarya Raut, who came up through junior company Rambert2, wowing with seriousness, power and limb-splaying agility. Antonello Sangirardi nails Vandekeybus’s trademark explosive choreography and Daniel Davidson proves a confident compere on the mic.

Some scenes are genius, some drag, but each time you’re falling into boredom the rollercoaster takes off somewhere else. And to what end? Something about birth, death and all of life’s loves and cruelties, celebrations and dysfunctions, and to quote Peggy Lee, if that’s all there is, then let’s keep dancing.

• Rambert: Draw from Within at Sadler’s Wells, London until 5 June, then tours to Southampton, Salford.