Power ballet of Big Brother

1984, Palace, Manchester (to Saturday)

I KNOW, it sounds a bit rum, a ballet version, courtesy of Northern Ballet, of one of the great and most disturbing novels of the 20th century; replacing nightmare visions of bleakness and torture with dancers prancing about on stage.

But trust me, it does work.

Orwell’s novel was all about prediction and gloom and before you go in you can probably make an educated guess about what your immediate future might bring: robotic, soulless workers, repetitive movement indicative of a life lived in harness, and so on and on, with lyricism finally blossoming when Smith and Julia get together. And that’s pretty much what you get.

But a piece like this is always going to be about atmosphere and mood, and here choreographer Jonathan Watkins delivers rather well, the Phillip Glass-like repetitiveness of the remarkably listenable music offering a solid foundation for the ensemble to build menace and fear.

The look is aided by the dark shadows and large video screens, from which Big Brother creepily looks down over everything; and designer Simon Daw’s world-askew commonplace items such as a bookcase that towers above the stage — ironically, in a nation that has lost its faith in books, knowledge and truth.

And yes, while the dance at first looks a bit like disco choreography from the Nineties, Watkins’ uses it as a base for development and crucially, pushes in a lush, rather lovely romanticism in both his choreography and Alex Baranowski’s score when Smith (the lithe Tobias Batley) and Julia (the small and lyrical Martha Leebolt) finally get away to the countryside (or in this case, a few tall, bare trees painted bright green).

It’s hard even so to get away from the fact that this is a dance drama based on a book that warns of fear and loathing and the difficulty of getting back things such as personal freedom and privacy once you let them slip away.

There is no Newspeak — indeed no speak at all — and the rat torture is of course highly sanitised and implied.

But in mood, texture and message, in many ways it is just as powerful to watch as the original is to read.