After 11 seasons, Cloud Dance Festival’s reputation and calibre of artists still continues to outdo itself. Inviting many returning artists and a few recognisable names, this season of the Festival, Entitled Hush, may sadly be the last for some time as the ever-dedicated Cloud Dance Festival team, led by pioneering director Chantal Guevara, take a well-earned rest.

Slanjayvah Danza’s eagerly anticipated return to Cloud Dance Festival did not disappoint. A polished performance of an extract of their new work Crazy Joanna told a restless story of sex and violence on the streets of Buenos Aires through intimate tango and a series of flawless lifts and contact work. Recently praised for highlighting domestic violence in the UK, this beautifully troubled work leaves behind a poignant message in the haunting image of Amir Giles dancing with Dani Ferreira’s lifeless body.

Lacking in the same subtlety, The Milo Miles Dance Company’s work, Spartacus, based on the legendry stories of the same name, was a dramatic display of high leg kicks and gymnastic trickery, cramming a total of fifteen half-naked dancers on the Cochrane Theatre’s intimate stage. Whilst technically sound, the movements of the under-rehearsed dancers was lacking in fluidity and conviction.  Epic in both its subject and its aspiring classical ballet style, the work seemed entirely at odds with the feel and standard of the rest of festival.

Effective and affecting, Bluebird [extract] by Vex Dance Theatre is a beautifully poignant spotlight on the struggles of immigrant life in Britain. Choreographers Jess McCormack and Kitty Smith’s work is at times literal using gas masks and suitcases as props, at others more abstract as the dancers drag themselves around the stage and form delicate relationships with each other, all accompanied by live and recorded sound bites of immigrants’ most basic and most moving thoughts.

Increasing the energy and tempo of the evening, sharp and engaging, Joss Arnott’s dancers are like an alien breed of beautiful girls, set on bewitching you with their metallic movements in his work threshold. Somewhere between a sci-fi movie and a Toni and Guy advertisement, their acrobatic, tribal formations transfix the enchanted audience.

James Wilton’s work, The Shortest Day, was an equally energetic and impressive display of flying bodies. Like rag dolls possessed, the acrobatic dancers jumped, dived and rolled with ferocious determination. Accompanied by a relentless rock soundtrack, a fleeting moment of calm was an all too short a break for the eyes and ears in this otherwise striking, exhaustingly high-octane piece.

As the only company invited to perform a triple bill by Cloud Dance Festival, Taciturn had a lot to prove with their slick, suited work, Grapple, and they did not disappoint. Moving quite literally like clockwork the dancers connect and disconnect in reiterative routines, interjected with their sparkling personalities. Diverse, distinct and unusually good at writing enticing programme notes, this is a refreshing company to watch.

Completing the evening with a dark look at the dreaded daily commute, Pair Dance performed their sombre work, Rush. Eerie tuba accompaniment and effective, hazy lighting gave this work more of an underworld rather than an London underground feeling. Performed with unfaltering strength and technique, the dancers embodied their neurotic character traits with unnerving conviction; a haunting end to an evening of piquant performances.

An accomplished evening from production and lighting to polished performances, the absence of Cloud Dance Festival on the contemporary dance scene will be sorely felt.