8 Minutes review – dancers and scientists make a stunning cosmic voyage

Sadler's Wells, London
Alexander Whitley's poetic and playful creation captures the alien unknowableness of the universe, as well as its visual magic

Eight minutes is the time it takes for the sun's light to reach the Earth: it's also the title of Alexander Whitley's new work, which is inspired by solar physics and aspires to conjure, through dance, the immensity of the forces that shape our universe.

Everything about the background to this piece, including Whitley's close collaboration with a team of space scientists, might lead you to fear a project encumbered by facts and a duty to explicate. But the unsettling beauty of the work's opening few minutes, with seven dancers moving in darkly flickering formation against a cosmic backdrop, makes it clear that Whitley has been liberated by the vastness of his subject, and has discovered a new level of poetic freedom and playfulness.