All stylish moves and computer wizardry

Saburo Teshigawara; KARAS Sadler's Wells, EC1

Luminous is described as choreography, but it's more like opera without the singing than most modern-day dance making. By that I mean it is theatrically big, with striking stage designs that are as much a part of the production as the performers themselves.

It is also operatic in its approach to music, or, more correctly, its digital/classical soundscape, which saturates the theatre rather than just accompanies the dance. The piece is also emotionally intense, gothic even, although the intensity is abstract rather than an obvious emotional theme.

It is an approach that has earned its maker, Saburo Teshigawara, both Edinburgh Festival plaudits and repeat Dance Umbrella invites (this is his fourth visit), as well as the holy of holies - kudos as an innovator. However, for all his supposed modernity, Teshigawara's newish production feels oldfashioned.

The two-hour, two-part, multi-scene Luminous is billed as an exploration of how the body perceives and adapts to "its visual and acoustic environment".

There are nine performers, including Teshigawara himself, the actor Evroy Deer and the blind dancer Stuart Jackson. The piece begins with Teshigawara alone on stage standing among numerous Perspex squares arranged on the floor and suspended on high. The impression is of a computer's circuit board, with Teshigawara a bit of electronic data. His movements are small and precise, and alternate between physical quiet and a sort of hurricane ferocity. There follows snatches of speech and fragments of dance, sometimes the group, sometimes solos, with portentous gaps and abrupt beginnings like a Dance of the Absurd.

The first half continues thus, and the effect is pretty dull. The second half is better, especially the fluorescent green section, when luminous light bathes the dancers, picking out their costumes but missing their skin, so you see vividly lime costumes dancing against a sooty void. The movement is stylish, as is the pure danced section that follows. Less successful is Teshigawara's duet with the Stuart Jackson. Only diligent programme readers will know he is visually impaired, the rest may think he's just not very good. Either way, the choreography looks knockedoff, although Jackson fares better than the self-indulgent Teshigawara.