Venice Dance Biennale: Alan Lucien Øyen: Still Life; Sankofa Danzafro: Behind the South: Dances for Manuel – review

The theme of this year’s Venice Dance Biennale is We Humans , and the idea is providing a strong sheltering umbrella for a programme of thoughtful and engaging work.

In Still Life , by the Norwegian Alan Lucien Øyen, and Behind the South , by the Colombian Rafael Palacios, two radical, committed choreographers present pieces that beneath their obvious contrasts – one cool and cerebral, the other with an accelerating pulse – are beautifully poised explorations of what it means to assert humanity in the face of different oppressions.

Both men have wide hinterlands of research, theatre and activism, and it shows in the way that they are prepared to use dance as a tool for thought, without ever losing the sense of its physical expressiveness.

On a smoky, darkened stage, Øyen places two remarkable dancers, Daniel Proietto and Mirai Moriyama, in dialogue, their voices echoing through handheld amplifiers. Proietto, in silhouette, moves his hands and arms like a blind man groping in darkness. Moriyama crouches beneath a piece of foil, describing the movement of ants. When the words stop, they simply move, their steps communicating a sense of panic and things slipping away. Moriyama stands framed in a cone of light, separated from the natural world, lost in a place of his own making, his movements jerky, frozen. Later, he surrounds Proietto with a pall of smoke as the dancer spins in tight circles.

The entire company crosses the space in repeated lines of pulsating movement, arms carving the air, feet beating the floor

The images are arresting, creating a lingering impression of a world in constant decay, where people are separated from nature and from one another. Towards the close, a cloth depicting the sea drops from above; at the very end, the men are stranded on shimmering wave, clinging together, for survival and for love. It’s a wonderful work, packed with emotion and ideas, melancholic but never depressing, an acceptance of entropy and change.

Behind the South: Dances for Manuel feels more like a call to arms. Inspired by the Colombian writer Manuel Zapata Olivella’s novel Changó, the Biggest Badass , about the African diaspora in the American continent, it blends scenes of revolution and flight with striking evocations of birth, death and the constant presence of the spiritual.

Twelve dancers and four musicians fill the stage with complex, reverberating patterns of sound and movement. A woman gives birth, bending in wide, white skirts and then gathering them into her arms to represent her newborn; a man walks behind her, tethered by an umbilical chord. Another woman appears in the darkened entrance, wearing a mask of white filigree, long white strands of fabric falling from her chin. She holds her arms arched, like a living goddess, making tiny steps as she crosses the stage.

Later, the entire company crosses the space in repeated lines of pulsating movement, arms carving the air, feet beating the floor in intricate shapes. It’s exhilarating, but also full of meaning – not all of it instantly apparent, but heavy with intent. The company’s name Sankofa means “return to the root” in Akan, a Ghanaian language, and their performance – their first in Europe – embodies that. You can see Palacios reclaiming the traditions of African dance away from exoticisation into something more powerful, tugging at the past to make a new future. Thrilling and profound.

• The Venice Dance Biennale continues until 3 August