Dance

This sexy piece of dance-theatre by Akram Khan and Juliette Binoche is easy to fall for but harder to admire. Pounding themselves against a brutally massive wall (contributed by Anish Kapoor and lit, like the National’s flytower, exclusively from the acid pastels range), Khan and Binoche alternate mutual writhing with anguished solos. It’s a very personal collaboration, in which Khan and Binoche communicate through his ’n’ hers physical movement and spoken memories (his: being bullied as a boy by a mullah/hers: some painful love affairs). It also aspires – vaguely but sincerely – to express something more universal.

Binoche isn’t a trained dancer, which makes her  vulnerable and touching though it limits Khan’s choreography: the push-me-pull-you engagement that Khan and Binoche throw themselves into is lovely when it tells the story of Binoche’s first crush, but looks tired by the end. The first scenes – one  a witty slapstick of a couple bickering over the loo seat – are well paced and, with Binoche’s ability to suggest Paris in a gesture, nicely placed as well.

Sadly all is lost when ‘in-i’ stops telling a story and falls in love with itself. Binoche delivers a muddled monologue crucified up on the wall. And Khan’s flashes of physical brilliance want a story to set them off. A writer or external director might have opened it up, but it ends where it began, in solipsism.