In her last world tour as a dancer, Sylvie Guillem celebrates the end of 39 years of dancing in Life in Progress, a performance that concludes her professional stage credits that range from the Royal Opera House to the Paris Opera Ballet to earth-shatteringly experimental contemporary dance.

Choreographer Akram Kahn sets an otherworldly, experimental tone in technê, the opening piece, introducing the tour as Guillem moves, dissonant then fluid movements, into and out of a pool of light with a silver tree centre stage. Accompanied by live musicians eerily lit upstage, the piece is percussive and inquisitive, captured in a sort of curiosity, as Kahn explains that his work “grows out of questions I don’t know how to answer” and Guillem seems to answer with odd, unpredictable and unexpected movements.

Guillem’s extraordinary talent is clearly showcased in these three unusual somewhat introspective pieces, interspersed by a fourth segment, William Forsythe’s comic and captivating DUO2015, danced by Brigel Gjoka and Riley Watts.  The standout for me, however, is Russell Maliphant’s female duet Here & After which features, along with an incredible performance by Guillem and Emanuela Montanari, some stunning lighting effects from Michael Hulls. Although the composition accompanying this piece was at times strangely discordant to the energy of this piece, the twists and turns of the two certainly kept the movement alive.

The fluency of the tour as a whole is noticeable as the pieces lend themselves to the other, opening on a note of strangeness and exploration and ending with a poignant sense of moving on in Bye choreographed by Mats Ek. As Guillem’s playful and poignant final piece approached its end, I am reminded of Degas’ famous bronze ballerinas, which were supposedly never intended to be cast in such a permanent material. Instead, Degas had kept them in his studio, changing their positions every now and then, keeping them alive and forever malleable in clay, forever in between movements.

As Guillem dances through her final tour – in styles of new and old, experimental, emotive, fast, slow, performing alone and together, even performing headstands – I see how she is illustrating life in constant motion, in progress, and this finale makes sense as she marks the end of her career in a flash of movement. Life in Progress at it travels around the world is, although not a grand celebration or drawn-out finale, a poignant and remarkably organic ending to such an outstanding career. It continues to explore, move, grow, and Guillem notably defies the trappings of any bronze casting and its permanence to celebrate a much more transient state in movement.

Life in Progress is playing London Coliseum until 2 August. For more information and tickets, see English National opera website. Photo by Bill Cooper.