The Associates at Sadler’s Wells reviewed: another acutely inventive work from Crystal Pite

The prodigious streetdancer Tommy Franzén pops up everywhere from family-friendly hip-hop shows by ZooNation, Boy Blue and Bounce to serious contemporary ballet by Russell Maliphant and Kim Brandstrup, but he’s a bit of a Macavity. He ought to be recognised as a star, but he effaces himself award-winningly in others’ work. That chameleon quality is a problem with his venture into the solo limelight, a Charlie Chaplin tribute, SMILE, on the Sadler’s Wells triple bill of associate choreographers last week.

Franzén’s mercurial moves are always thrilling to watch, and his creative extension of Chaplinesque capering into some acrobatic popping and b-boying does OK in making the Little Tramp a street brother of hip-hop’s outsiders. Still, something much funnier and more provocative is needed than ZooNation director Kate Prince’s saccharine tears-of-a-clown approach, with an autopilot Louis Armstrong and Harry Connick Jr playlist. Chaplin was a complicated figure, with unpopular sexual and political inclinations, and a mesmerising charisma.