AFTER an ambitious but artistically uncertain relaunch early this year, the Leeds-based Phoenix Dance Theatre has found its feet in a revival of its artistic director Darshan Singh Bhuller’s 1998 Planted Seeds. This is a superb example of dance with a political conscience, sometimes hard to watch but hard to forget.

It was inspired by media coverage of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, particularly accounts of the systematic rape of women and the doomed union of a real-life Romeo and Juliet. Rather than grabbing his subject-matter from headlines, Bhuller travelled to postwar Sarajevo. The finished work is informed by his first-hand observations and encounters, plus a judiciously applied imagination.

Much of its power derives from the simplicity of the staging, bare apart from a free-standing doorway, an ominous stretchy rope and some hanging lightbulbs. To fill the space, Bhuller relies on meaty movement by a cast of nine emotionally expressive performers.

Resourcefully lit by Mark Parry, the dance follows an elliptical narrative. After a short series of establishing cinematic snapshots, it kicks in with an exuberant ensemble celebration. But there are chilling inflections to this folksy festivity, as when the gathering’s eldest member (Bob Smith, an ageing bull) mimes gunning down his fellow revellers.

Guided by Gorecki’s slow-burning Third Symphony, most of Act I focuses on female suffering. Davina Gavin, Tiia Ourila, Kialea-Nadine Williams and Tanya Richam-Odoi prop each other up, lie spent or hurl themselves in flailing desperation atop the dark, surging sea of music.

Bhuller plays up the anxiety before one or another is taken offstage to be brutalised, and lays bare the paroxysmic damage done after each returns. The dance is stronger because the violence is largely implied.

The spare but textured stylisation continues in Act II. Here Kevin Turner and Lisa Welham’s young lovers meet an unwanted destiny cued to sinister whispers and driving rain beneath liturgical chant.

Balding and pot-bellied, Smith dominates the aftermath. He’s no stock villain, but rather the ambiguous embodiment of hatred and fear. His duet with Errol White, a stunning display of male indoctrination into barbarity, is followed by a beautifully prayerful solo from Yann Seabra. The final note of Bhuller’s cruel, compassionate production is, fittingly, a false, savagely tainted peace.

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