Walking with cadence

I often regret that I’m writing in the past tense here, but never more than about milonga. It is such a smash show in every way that by rights it would be having a six-month run where everyone can see it, rather than five measly days at the elite Sadler’s Wells dance theatre where people aren’t put off by a choreographer’s tripartite name that takes several goes to pronounce.

Tango has a way of curdling in show presentation — just to say ‘thrusting loins and stiletto toes’ is already a Strictly-type parody. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is something of an expert cook, however. Uncategorisable except in that mysteriously wide umbrella called contemporary, now 39, he has made an outstanding creative virtue of his polyglot background and Belgian–Moroccan parentage, rather as Akram Khan has alchemised his British–Bangladeshi roots. In fact, they appeared in a show together a few years back, two of the most fascinating male dancers of our time not quite convincing as a harnessing.