Without Hope or Fear

Without Hope or Fear is the culmination, for Paul Johnson, of three years of work as choreographer-in-residence at the Project. The period is chronicled with great honesty in his publication, Fine Lines on Shifting Ground, launched before the show.

Although Johnson is, for the first time, using female as well as male dancers in his MaNDaNCE company, the four couples dancing intimately together in silence as Paul Keogan's lighting catches them at the opening are all same-sex couples. Reflectively, they explore each other's bodies before letting their fingers do the walking over their own, ending in the famous grip of one wrist by the other hand, which has come to be the signature of this piece, portrayed on both programmes and posters. Later, to long-time collaborator Eugene Murphy's music, emphasising key moments, they dance individually or in different pairings, using the vocabulary that Johnson has evolved during the four Work-in-Progress pieces to explore relationships and express them through movement. At one point the positions of a line of men are twice adjusted by dancer Mariam Ribon to suggest closer relationships in a more attractive grouping.

The male belly dancing episode, first seen in the first Work-in-Progress, is developed, while the women watch, but there is also much new material and some very attractive lifts before the piece ends as it began, with the four couples drifting offstage, locked in each other's arms.

The development in Johnson's work since early 1998 more than justifies the vision of the then Artistic Director of Project, Fiach MacConghail, in setting up the residency.

Continues until Saturday at 8 p.m.; to book: 01-6796622