Harlekin's Tempest

When Lemi Ponifasio says dance, it is not recognisable in the Western tradition. A few fragments of recognisable Maori gesturing and clockwork priests pottering across the stage aside, Tempest is slow, surreal and evocative and passes the litmus test for physical theatre: multiple walk outs.

If Tempest avoids the "universal language of dance", its themes are universal. The angel of history looks at the past, screaming as the calamities and horror pile up and collide into a final devastating destruction. A body crawls into a patch of light, shining black with oil and reduced to a hunk of flesh; activist Tame Iti appears to taunt the audience with an aggressive display; the angel screams and the priests shatter chalk across the stage. Environmental catastrophe jostles against personal isolation. Blood spreads across the set, the lighting cuts the stage into squares of white against overwhelming darkness.

The pedestrian pace is a challenge, but suits the meditative nature of Tempest. Time itself is slowed down and the dancers gradually enter a ritualistic space, entrancing and allusive. A brave choice for an International Festival: the disappearance of entire rows in the auditorium was perhaps inevitable. The reward for staying, however, is a glimpse into a new way of approaching our contemporary despair, even if it is hopeless.

Derevo, ironically, don't get a single walk-out. They are still discomforting, alienated and weird. In recent years, they have become the clown princes of physical theatre, their Russian white-face is now a defining characteristic of work that wants to be physical. Harlekin is a breath-taking analysis of heartbreak, and another melancholic wild ride.

Dispensing rapidly with the story of Harlekin and his romantic failure, it follows his subsequent journey into depression. Each scene is a perfect representation of unrequited love. His heart leaves his body and plays a vaudeville monkey, the Harlekin the morose organ-grinder, selling his failure as comedy. He hands his beloved a crown; she uses it to iron her vanity presentable. The puppet master, a benign yet foolish god, disappears, leaving behind a determinedly dancing black clad devil.

There is a certain shambolic stage-craft around the performances, and the final, disturbing image of the Harlekin, alone at the foot of the ladder, appeals to the unrequited and broken, the dispirited and conflicted.

Tempest and Harlekin are determinedly pessimistic. The human is adrift in a world rich with meaning that is just beyond comprehension. The cataclysm is clear to the characters and audience, yet it is impossible to face or change. Even Derevo's humour is ironic and dour: onstage laughter is a vain cry against the mounting horror.