David Bellan enjoys dances performed in time-honoured fashion

Time is the theme that runs through this evening, a collaboration between Oxford Youth Dance and Ellyfish and Things Dance Theatre. The bright opener, Time is Running Out, came from Slipstream Youth Dance group. Words on the back projections tell us “she’s alive”, “she complex” and so on, while other spoken words from the cast need to be enunciated more clearly to be understood. An enjoyable piece, though, with a clock ticking away the final moments as the music and the dance get more rocky.

Ellyfish and Things’ piece Strange Loop gets deeper into science. With the voice of telly heart-throb Professor Brian Cox and other luminaries giving us facts about time, it begins with a group of three girls and two boys linked in a circle, reminiscent of the stylised dancers of Matisse. Then the choreography becomes more free. “Time has existed since before time began”, we are told. A lapse of logic here?

I greatly enjoyed Time in Space by Vale Dance Academy — seven girls who have clearly done a fair bit of training — in a fluid, at times playful work. We are told they “explored order and chaos in the universe”, but happily it was order that triumphed here. Something More to Say, featuring a large cast from Oxford Youth Dance, stays in my memory mainly for a beautiful closing, the group standing with their arms slowly spreading.

After the interval came Changin’ Times to Bob Dylan’s iconic song. The Helpers group have focused on “the difference in perception of time as you grow older, and our own personal timelines”. Hard, as usual with such descriptions, to relate them to the dance. But a nice piece that ends in a Sixties-style rave-up. Genevieve Reeves then performed her own attractive solo At Your Fingertips, followed by Dylan Hay in his amusing piece When Life Gives You Lemons. In it he draws a face on a lemon. It dances with him wearing its happy, fixed smile. Then he kills it by biting out a huge chunk.

The Oxford Youth Dance ensemble piece Out of the Cave Came Steve brought the evening to a cheerful close.