Love, harmony, beauty, happiness…. Why are the most life-enhancing aspects of our being so seldom presented in contemporary dance works? Is it because the world we live in is so troubled; or can it be that these states are, in fact, more difficult to express on stage than their darker counterparts? If so, then Truus Bronkhorst and Marien Jongewaard have created a small masterpiece of optimism in Wonderful World, presented under the banner of New Moves Last night.

But what really makes this work so exceptional is the way in which its creators set seemingly banal movements to a collage of fairly well worn music and still manage to make it look fresh. So we see the company of four women and four men striding through a robotic freize and pumping out an aerobics routine to Prince, and partnering each other in simple, paired down pas de deux to Satie and Pachelbel.

Yet this extreme simplicity only serves to highlight the very emotions which would normally be undermined by such an approach because the work is conceived and performed entirely without irony- a rare thing these days.

In a similar vein, the sexes are treated as complete equals; the women are lifted and carried in time-honoured tradition in the duets , but it is they who pound out a punishing minimalist routine until they practically drop, and in one sequence lovingly strip the men and dress them in big frilly shirts like so many anatomically correct Ken dolls. Genitalia exposed, the men then prance and cavort though a routine of dashing nobility which is neither humiliating nor prurient.

Gender is not defined by strength or sensitivity. Bronkhorst's and Jongewaard's world may be unrealistically optimistic, but it is, indeed, wonderful.

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