Although there had been some concern among members of the audience about the 90-minute running time, without an interval, La La La Human Steps quickly proved that they can achieve in 90 minutes what other companies would take several hours to do.

'New Work' was La La La Human Steps' first performance in London for over four years, and a celebration of the company's thirty years which has seen collaborations with Frank Zappa, David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Opéra de Paris to name but a few. In this time, the company's choreographic style has changed dramatically, with a fusion of classical and contemporary styles, and an emphasis on the dancers' almost unnatural speed. 'New Work' also displayed choreographer Édouard Lock's interest in film and lighting as integral parts of the performance. It claimed to be a fusion of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, and Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice, however in Lock's narrative-free choreography, there was little indication of this.

The performance opened with two women depicted on two large screens; were they grandmother and granddaughter? Was one the digitally aged version of the other? Why were we watching them, and how were they connected to the performance? We saw this pair of women and another pair four times during the performance - we watched them fidget, feign sleep and look at each other. Then the screens would be removed, and the dance would resume. Later in the piece, the women were replaced by retinal images and finally by an image of superimposed bodies moving out of sync with each other, creating a Kali-esque effect.

The opening sequences of 'New Work' were performed with an energy and dynamism which was sustained throughout the performance, displayed in a series of balletic solos, duets and other group pieces including incidences of dancers dancing together yet independently of each other. And while the effect was impressive, the repetitiveness of the choreography emphasised the limited movement vocabulary of this work, which served mostly to highlight the motion of the dancers' arms and legs, accentuated by skimpy costumes and low lighting throughout. There were numerous echoes of Swan Lake during the piece - which was also mentioned in the reviews of the 2008 performance of 'Amjad' - as well as frequent snakelike movements. To offset the frenetic movement of the dancers, the surplus dancers created tableaux onstage, while the live musicians - playing a haunting score by Gavin Bryars on cello, saxophone, violin and a grand piano - sat to the rear of the stage.

Overall, it was an exhausting experience for the audience to watch such rapid choreography in very dim lighting, and we were left with a feeling that the piece suffered from having an excess of things to say, and insufficient editing to pare it down to a more realistic length. While it was definitely an enjoyable performance, and worth watching just to experience the beauty of it, it'd be a much more rewarding experience had it been reduced to 45 minutes in length.