Dance review: Dance Me 'If you are a Leonard Cohen fan you will love it'

The dancers perform with intensity; some pieces work better than others. A lot of the movement is set close to the ground, with the dancers in deep plies, their arms swirling around; lifts come as a surprise, punctuating the air with power. Some of the choreography was repetitive – I longed for some quick footwork to break the pattern of movement.

Sets are minimal, as are the costumes – simple trousers and tops for the men, the women frequently in skimpier versions of the same. The lighting is extremely effective and highlights the beauty of the dancers’ bodies; sometimes it is barely there, focusing on hands or feet in the darkness, sometimes the lights blaze out into the audience.

There are moments to treasure: Rustem’s Dance Me to the End of Love was powerful and Boogie Street (by Foniadakis) had a sultry vibe. My favourite piece was Rustem’s pas de deux set to Suzanne, which was luminous in its beauty. Hallelujah, the anthem for which Cohen is most famous, did not make an appearance until nearly the end of the evening and was sung (rather well) by a couple of the dancers.

Dance Me is a mixed bag – if you are a Leonard Cohen fan you will love it, but if not, it is still worth a look. One gripe: all the words in the programme are printed in a tiny font against a background of dark images of the dancers in performance, making a lot of the pages hard, if not impossible to read.

Ballets Jazz Montreal is performing Dance Me – Music by Leonard Cohen at Sadlers Wells, London EC1 until 14 February