Conceal | Reveal celebrates the artistic partnership between Russell Maliphant and Michael Hulls

Choreographer Russell Maliphant  and lighting designer Michael Hulls could just as easily be thought of as innovators or architects. Conceal | Reveal at Sadler's Wells tells the story of their creative partnership spanning 20 years. Together they have forged new choreographic terrain, a topography of movement and light.

Spiral Pass is the first – and stand out – work of the evening. Performed by dancers from the Bayerisches Staatsballett, the piece unfurls in a meditative, almost reverent, atmosphere. Soloists Lucia Lacarra and Marlon Dino are the focal point. Lacarra barely touches the floor as she is lifted and spun by Dino. There's an echo of Petipa's Rose Adagio as Lacarra (The Sleeping Beauty) is repeatedly held in the air by three male dancers. She walks balancing on their arms, as if weightless. Her lines are like cut glass, extending beyond the ends of her porcelain limbs. In the ensemble sections, the dancers obit around one another with sweeping circular movements. Watching Spiral Pass is like witnessing the creation of a piece of origami; the performers' bodies making the intricate folds that grow into a living piece of restless sculpture.

Broken Fall – originally created for Sylvie Guillem in 2003 – enters the company's repertoire for the first time. Dancers Adam Kirkham, Yu-Hsien Wu and Nathan Young are like malleable pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, exploring an evolving pattern of interlocking shapes and counter balances. They move with an incredible lightness, running and jumping as if caught by a gust of wind. Barry Adamson's score is multi-layered with sounds from nature and urban living. A trilling flute suggests the brightness of an early morning and a silky trumpet meandering over a jazz riff evokes an inky night-time interior.

˂˂both, and˃˃ is a new solo for Dana Fouras. Lit from the back, Fouras dances with her shadow. Her silhouette ebbs and flows as she moves closer or further away from the light. Like waves tracing patterns in the sand, Fouras' arms sweep in gentle arcs and her long hair catches the light as she twists and turns. Hull's lighting design draws a halo effect around her - the outline of her body glows, accentuating the lines of her arms and torso. We see Fouras' form, but her physical substance is elusive and at times frustratingly opaque. 

The evening ends with Piece No. 43; a reference to the number of works Maliphant and Hull have collaborated on over the last two decades. Dancers slowly emerge into rectangular pools of light only to melt away. Maliphant teases out a movement sequence using repetition. The dancers catch and pass short phrases between them in a silent game of Chinese whispers. The contours of their bodies are manipulated by Hull's sculptural use of light. This goes to the heart of Maliphant and Hull's shared purpose – the evolution of an intrinsic relationship between light and movement.

The hallmarks of Maliphant's artistic alliance with Hull are celebrated in this quartet of work. Together they have created a new architecture for dance. But with the exception of Spiral Pass, the programme feels rather 'one note'. You can have too much of a good thing. The pieces in Conceal | Reveal lack delineation and the overall impact is somewhat diminished as a result.