Tantalisingly tempting

Russell Maliphant Company, Queen Elizabeth Hall

Russell Maliphant is one of those choreographers whose work is an endlessly tantalising riddle. He trained at the Royal Ballet School and retains its discipline, and yet his work is nothing like the tutus and tiaras he grew up with.

Instead, it's a downy-soft kickboxing-capoeira mix, but just as you thrill to the risks, in comes a spinning leap like something out of Kenneth MacMillan, and then a fabulous port de bras, ballet's "carriage of the arms", only reworked in sensuous and unexpected ways.

Catherine-wheel swooshes are followed by slow rotations that makes arms look more lovely than you thought possible. Did I say lovely? Nothing about Maliphant's work is that explicit, although a tenderness and unspoken intimacy pervade his dances.

Reconciling these polar opposites is what makes Maliphant's work so appealing. You might call him a miniaturist, thrilling at solos and duets, less good at group dances, which tend to be replications rather than genuine ensemble dancing. All, however, are finely crafted with that seemingly impossible combination of high speed and mesmeric calm.

Unsurprisingly, Maliphant sold out the Queen Elizabeth Hall on Saturday night, his only appearance at this year's Dance Umbrella festival. On the programme were three pieces; the new Choice, plus two re-worked pieces rather gnomically titled One Part II and Two Times Three. The latter was based on a solo for his real-life partner and one-time MacMillan dancer, Dana Fouras, only expanded for three. The trio stood in Michael Hulls's pillars of amber light, their arms splicing the air, their legs kicking, sometimes in relay, sometimes synchronised, all to Andy Cowton's rocking drum score.

The new Choice, to a pan-Asian dub, was for five dancers and started shakily. However, it soon found its form with some powerful partnering and knee-swivelling turns for the two men, the women slightly less well deployed. Maliphant's solo, One Part II, set to JS Bach, is a sort of cryptic version of what he does for the others and every bit as charismatic.

It's a pity if you missed it, for Maliphant is a class act.