It’s rare for a choreographer to have created a dance language so unique as to be as recognisable as a Picasso painting or a Vivienne Westwood dress. But such is the case with Israel’s Sharon Eyal. Her movement palette echoes the ‘Gaga’ style developed by Ohad Naharin (with whom she worked as a Batsheva dancer) but distils it into something far more insectile and uncanny: febrile twitches and oozing sashays. It’s like watching aliens enact the roles of humans, or watching a silent movie played out in real time, flickers included. 

That the seven dancers in The Brutal Journey Of The Heart (co-directed by Eyal’s long-term collaborator Gai Behar) maintain this feat of precision and detail, in perfect formation or fugue (and frequently on tiptoes), for 55 minutes is astonishing. And Eyal and Behar’s eye for the shapes a collection of bodies can make together is fascinating.

This piece is the third chapter in company L-E-V’s Love Cycle series, exploring the intensity of relationships, while, as the title suggests, the symbol of the heart oscillates in and out of view throughout. The dancers draw close, into a tableau of a sacred heart, where legs spear out to form the trademark jagged beams. Later they gloop together as a pulsing organ, and under Alon Cohen’s scarlet lighting their limbs seem like valves and arteries. 

Ori Lichtik’s score, though challenging, is a good foil for Eyal’s choreography, bringing Latin and blues songs (or their echoes) in and out of focus, with grinding electro beats and freaky atonal melodies. The Brutal Journey Of The Heart is a strange and rich food for the eyes; relentless but mesmerising.  

L-E-V: Chapter 3 – The Brutal Journey Of The Heart, Festival Theatre, 14 August, 9pm.