IF YOU are interested in dance and movement then don’t miss next week’s double bill at the Lawrence Batley Theatre.

The pairing of work by solo performer Matilda Leyser and critically acclaimed young theatre company Ockham’s Razor offers one of the most exciting evenings of the current season.

That could apply in physical terms alone, for both these companies stage shows which include aerial skills and the kind of physical theatre work that makes for powerful performances.

Wednesday’s show opens with Leyser’s latest performance piece, called simply, Lifeline. And on stage that Lifeline is a single rope which hangs in space and supports her as her story unfolds from childhood to maturity.

And where that lifeline ends, so does her story.

It promises much, especially in the skilled hands of a performer like Leyser, who spent nine years as a dancer and also taught and choreographed with several professional companies in this country and in Europe.

She’s also worked with Telling Times, an international mixed media company dedicated to researching improvisation in performance.

But Leyser’s inquisitiveness about form, space and movement collaborate with diverse circus, theatre and dance companies and Lifeline was a commission from Circus Space.

It went on to be selected as part of the Royal Opera House’s Firsts season, which in turn led to a second commission called Dead Point.

The second work to be showcased at the LBT next week is by Ockham’s Razor, a company which specialises in creating physical theatre on new pieces of aerial equipment.

The company derives its name and philosophy from the medieval writer, Franciscan friar William of Ockham, who, in essence, declared that all things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the right one.

The company will stage two pieces at the LBT.

Memento Mori is an intimate duet performed on a suspended metal frame based on Holbein’s The Dance of Death woodcuts and which on its first showing in Paris in 2004 won a prestigious Jeunes Talents Cirque award.

The second piece from the company is Every Action, described as a playful look at the bonds that form when people are thrown together.

Four strangers meet before 25 metres of suspended rope and discover that everything you do will affect someone somewhere..

The box office for this very different double bill, which is in the main house at the LBT and starts at 8pm, is on 01484 430528.