Review: Outshine - intense, astounding, bold or just enjoyable, this was great dance

An E-Side production, Outshine brings together four short pieces from different choreographers. While there are no masterpieces, it’s a consistently entertaining programme – the choreography displays an impressive level of assurance and the dancing is particularly good.

Mr Judge is a solo choreographed and performed by former City Contemporary Dance Company luminary Luo Fan, now a member of Sweden’s Goteborg Dance Company. Set to a creepy spoken piece from the Late Night Tales audio series, this is something completely different - Criminal Minds meets contemporary dance.

Dark, intense and theatrical, it does a skilful job of building tension and sends a pleasurable shiver down the spine. Above all, it’s a welcome reminder of what a phenomenal dancer Luo is – his fluidity and freedom of movement are astounding and it’s good to see how he has continued to develop as an artist since leaving Hong Kong in 2012.

One of Hong Kong’s most talented younger choreographers, Yuh Egami has never been afraid to take risks. In Firefly he renews his partnership with multimedia ace James Kong King-sin in an experiment to express movement in patterns of light generated by electronic devices worn on the dancers’ bodies.

As the performers (Yui Sugawara and Wu Cheng-fang) dance on their own or interweave on the dark stage, their movements are picked out by lights on their arms and legs and re-created in flashes and whorls of light projected on the backcloth.