Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's Puz/zle, Sadler's Wells, review Sadler's Wells has a series of alphabetically challenged creations coming up, and the first is from its associate artist Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. In fairness to the ever-inventive choreographer, the graphical oddity of the title reflects the structure of the staging. He is playing with puzzles and with patterns in order to explore nothing less than the nature of human existence and the progress of human history. His new piece, created for last year's Avignon Festival and originally performed in a quarry, opens with a wonderful series of coups de théâtre. A video projection on an apparently solid wall shows a vista of rooms; as it vanishes, the dancers of the Eastman company hurl themselves repeatedly against the blank surface where the door once was. This progress - from disorder to linear discipline, from chaos to control - is repeated throughout the piece, which seems to describe an ascent of man as these primitive strugglers who turn on frightened outsiders, become a functioning group, posing inside newly constructed temples, winding round a rococo monument or preening like statues of gods and saints. Cherkaoui is brilliant at creating striking images, and his dancers never look less than beautiful or perform with anything other than staggering, fluid skill. But apart from one sunlit scene where sculptors chisel their bodies into shape, the tone is unrelentingly earnest. The music - from a Lebanese singer, Japanese flautist and drummer and Corsican a capella choir performing on stage - is relentless; its meaning, obviously important, is unclear. Every section of dance could be five minutes shorter and retain its impact. But then, after almost two hours, the dancers build a wall, similar to the one in the occupied territories of the West Bank, and one covers a section in swift graffiti. When he has finished, he flies round the stage, in hip-hop movements of fierce, fast beauty. It is hard to grasp the exact significance of his act, but it feels urgent and important. Moments such as this reveal what a distinctive and interesting choreographer Cherkaoui is; even at less than his best his work is always stimulating.