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But it's hard to avoid the conclusion that this time less really is less

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But it's hard to avoid the conclusion that this time, less really is less.The blood promised to start coursing again in Groove and Countermove, part of Brown's recent jazz trilogy. The geometry of the title relates to the ways bodies can slot together - a woman's head lodged in the curve of a man's neck, a woman pinioned on her partner's foot. Torsos wind into multiple knots from which single elements eventually ping free. Lengths of draped white fabric drift about, enhanced by Jennifer Tipton's sculptural lighting. Salvatore Sciarrino's breathy score for flute and electronics registers so low on the decibel count that you think the tape must have broken.Brown matches this barely-there quality with movement so slow and deliberating it's more like a game of chess.

Geometry of Quiet, premiered last year, is a particularly uphill job, though in fact the title is an understatement. Of course, it could be partly that they ask us to work harder. There's no way you can watch the screens and the shapes and individual dancers all at once, so your brain finds a level of blissful inertia while all the senses spark.The trouble with early masterpieces is that they must be followed, and neither of the two companion pieces Brown showed at Sadler's Wells made a comparable impact. For 25 minutes the activity doesn't pause for breath, and you'd think it would be maddening with the high-pitched gong in Anderson's tape-loop banging on and on like a headache But instead it's trance-inducing. With its Robert Rauschenberg set (translucent cubes and pyramids projected with flickery newsreel) and smart Laurie Anderson score, it is very much of its time: a collage about collage, about perceiving the whole picture from tantalising scraps.And the dance is a delight - seven bodies clad in Rauschenberg's newsprint pyjamas darting and diving and bobbing up like flotsam in a millstream. Seized by what she called "a rapture to move", she set out to create intricate compositions in which everyday movement such as walking, running, swinging an arm, blossomed into sensuous flurries of energy. Set and Reset, made in 1983, shows her at the peak of this period, and it was good that Dance Umbrella, for this 25th birthday season, asked her to revive it. As early as the late 1970s she had left behind the spare formulas of her early pieces - the walking up the sides of Manhattan buildings, the what-is-dance? enquiries.

What happens to radical post-modernists when they get old? Do they take up bridge and perm their hair? Do they revisit their early experiments, or do they adapt to the changing zeitgeist? The American Trisha Brown, now 67, is an adapter. One regretfully concludes that these plays are not loudly applauded because they are not that good.k.bassett independent.co.uk 'See You Next Tuesday': Albery, London WC2 (020 7369 1730), booking to 11 Jan; 'Wrong Place': Soho, London W1 (020 7478 0100), to 25 Oct; 'Quietly Making Noise': Royal Exchange Studio, Manchester (0161 833 9833), to Sat. Her soldier-husband (excellent Craig Cheetham) is gently supportive but spasmodically aggressive They have all got suppressed problems. Then, in a staggeringly bold, dreamlike twist, the earth is engulfed in a flood of Biblical proportions and our protagonists are adrift on some floorboards. Joined by the wife of Nell's childhood abuser, they are all looking out for signs of civilisation.Again this play has ferocious raw moments. But Simon Daw's set design is inept, with the cast being obliged to hack at ridiculously wobbly tree trunks and "lower" each other into underground chasms without any hole provided in the floor.

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