Aakash Odedra Company, Brisbane Festival, September 27.

IN Rising, young British dancer Aakash Odedra presents four solos, one by himself (exquisite) and the others from Akram Khan, Russell Maliphant and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. That towering trio of dance-makers says it all. The evening may be very brief – perhaps 45 minutes of dance in all – but the quality is exceptional and there was no feeling of being short-changed. Quite the reverse.

Odedra’s credentials are established in the opening piece Nritta, his own work. He is revealed as a man of light build dressed in the long, slender-fitting jacket and trousers that immediately evoke the subcontinent. While all the pieces use elements of the classical Indian dance in which Odedra was trained, Nritta stays closest to the source. Enveloped in murky, diffuse lighting Odedra is all light and blistering speed, like a gambolling, exceptionally elegant sprite. Little balletic little leaps punctuate rapid-fire spins that sometimes come to a sudden stop for a moment of repose then continue on their way, decorated with sensuous upper-body swirls. The mood is prayerful, in a pantheistic, pan-sexual kind of way.

Odedra’s astonishing plasticity is exploited in a very different way in Khan’s In the Shadow of Man. Stripped to the waist, he yelps and writhes like a wounded animal. The swift circling on his knees, wheeling arms, splayed fingers and liquid torso come from Indian classicism but are rendered anguished and ultra-contemporary by Khan. The crepuscular lighting is by Michael Hulls, who also lights Russell Maliphant’s CUT. This piece has many similarities with Maliphant’s Two, in which Sylvie Guillem has appeared in Australia. The dancer is mostly in semi-darkness as parts of the body flicker in and out of the light. In CUT Odedra’s fingers glow like coals, his arms pulsate convulsively and he spins like a dervish as Andy Cowton’s wall-of-sound music ramps up the vibrations.

After these excitements Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Constellations looks uncharacteristically soft-centred. Lights sway across the space and come on and off as Odedra moves amongst them. Again his plasticity is seen to advantage, but the piece itself isn’t really terribly interesting. Pretty, but a wee bit sentimental.

That didn’t stop last Friday’s Brisbane Festival audience from jumping to its feet instantly at the end, something I haven’t previously seen there.

Next stop, Sydney …

Rising, Parramatta Riverside Theatres, Sydney, October 5-6.