The Financial Times? Clement Crisp has an interesting perspective on SFB principal Yuri Possokhov?s ?Study in Motion?:

?The succeeding Study in Motion is very odd.

Skryabin piano music is realised by Yury Posokhov in dance that recalls the later choreographies of Kasyan Goleizovsky, a fascinating experimentalist in 1920s Moscow who fell victim to Stalinist artistic policy. When he returned to grace in the 1960s he produced concert numbers (using Skryabin) having the non-specific intensities we see in Posokhov’s work.

Watching SFB’s fine soloists surge through it (with disastrously unbecoming costumes for the women) is like time-travelling, and not a little disconcerting. Rampant anguish. Dance and emotions flung to the winds.
Posokhov catches Skryabin’s weirdnesses and makes well-shaped movement but it is rather dated.?

The Guardian?s Judith Mackrell agrees:

?Yuri Possokhov’s Study in Motion, the second of these, does, however, look like slightly exhausted family stock.

Dancing to Scriabin is always tricky – there’s a diffuseness in the music that rarely focuses a choreographer’s attention – and Possokhov’s use of seven discrete piano pieces makes for more vagueness still. Ensembles, duets and solos flit by in unlinked progression, and while the steps are neatly assembled they don’t transport either the performers or the music to a different place.?

The Telegraph?s Ismene Brown is rather more partial to it, and taken with Lorena Feijoo:

?Possokhov is an SFB dancer from Russia, and an intriguing emergent choreographer whose Russianness is writ thoroughly through his Study in Motion, premi?red this year. White net curtains waft, silhouetted figures moon about, and Scriabin’s thick, luscious, odd-flavoured piano music takes us on rather too long a journey into gracefully choreographed love business between four couples.

The leading female, Lorena Feijoo, makes it worth watching ? you can split ballerinas into dancers and women who dance, and the latter are often the more rewarding artists. So it is with Feijoo, with her down-turned Jeanne Moreau mouth and inflammatory moodiness.?

So you win some, you lose some when you look overseas to shore up your critical evaluations. I found Possokhov?s latest dance stunning when it premiered last year?I saw it three times. But the Brits bring their own contexts?and fresh eyes?to the table. I respect their viewpoint but I retain my fondness for the work.

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