LAST year it was snakes in the grass, this year it’s birds in flight – and dancing at its most sublime.

The ten-strong troupe, theTalent, has an appreciative audience in Darlington which was treated to a thrilling new work, The Murmuring, inspired by the massed swooping of myriads of birds, and a formal contrasting piece, Mesmerics, reworked by choreographer Christopher Wheeldon for this company.

Dance takes on a different dynamic when the performers are all male – muscular, athletic and powerful – but here nonetheless graceful in fluidity of movement. Their physical strength lends itself in particular to impressive lifts and speed of action.

Alexander Whitley’s The Murmuring, with its swirling repetitions, touching hands, waving arms and back arching motif, caught the swift passages of collective motion, but on the semi-dark misty stage also contained an analogy to individual conflict common to the human species.

The opening insistent musical beat gathered pace and led to the sonorous tolling of a bell. Vague shapes on grainy black and white film intermittently projected on to the dark backdrop suggested pulsing human flesh before an ultimate image of sacrificial suffering.

Aggressive kicks, mass jostling and jagged shapes surrounding a fight between rivals ended in a superbly danced, pitifully expressive solo of writhing and twitching, describing a creature brought down, desperate to rise again.

After the interval, Mesmerics lifted the mood in ever-evolving abstract patterns using numerically different groupings of figures, in which each lyrical combination was mirrored by a matching set.

Low lighting etched bodies in a soft glow before the backdrop lifted to reveal sky blue fluorescence enhancing the acrobatic twisting shapes. Set to a hypnotic Philip Glass score with short silences before each orchestral repetition, the work fully lived up to its title in being totally mesmerising.

Pru Farrier