Lorna Irvine is swept away in EIF's (****) marathon of impressive dance.
Artistic Director of Scottish Ballet since August 2012, and all-round good chap, Cristopher Hampson has put together a programme which best illustrates the remit of the company: in bringing new works in, side by side with more well-known pieces. The emphasis is on a wide range of styles and the whole process, Hampson says, has taken months, from April-May to August. “It hasn't always been easy,” says Hampson wryly, “often it was like a kind of casting Sudoku!"
On the strength of this, his efforts and that of everyone involved with Scottish Ballet have been well worth it.
James Cousins' Still It Remains, opens and is an uneasy collision of folk movement and ballet set to The Kronos Quartet's wild gypsy violin score. The movement, initially tentative and feline, becomes an exercise in savagery as the quartet all solo off then come together with flamenco inspired poses and undulating, frenetic shaping.
The Room, choreographed by Helen Pickett, is a provocative study of desire, submission and domination. Vulnerability and discomfort in the human form is illustrated by face stroking and almost vomiting gestures. Elsewhere, manipulation and restraint is brought into the group work and the dancers stretch limbs out as though trying to escape their own skins. A jarring, twitchy piece.
If the previous piece is all about desire, then Henri Oguike's In This Storm explores a more spiritual path. A puppet-like solo melts into a fiery pas de deux, grappling and animalistic. A trio try to cast out demons. There is voodoo ritual with a tangle of limbs, a witchy female solo and Russian folk flourishes just when you think you have got a handle on it. All set to a thunderous soundtrack, it is almost apocalyptic.
There is an intense athleticism, typical of Martin Lawrance's best work, in Dark Full Ride, which is so exhaustive it is seemingly on the brink of collapse. In skinny jeans and personalised t-shirts, the dancers bleed jazz phrases into more contemporary work. A chain is formed then just as soon broken. At certain points the dancers look almost robotic, such is the precision. A sparse yet relentless piece.
Additional Foyer Performances: Foibles, Oxymore
There is a kind of ‘flash mob mentality' to the foyer pieces: the audience is almost nose to nose with the dancers, some of whom run into the audience and sit at the bar.
In Kristen McNally's cheeky Foibles, the dancers throw Fosse-inspired shapes, hips sway or the men perform vaudevillian walks, a la Charlie Chaplin. Movement is episodic—as varied as the music of Nick Cave, Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood and Enio Morricone, which comes in seemingly random bursts. Playful, loose and slinky, with wit and irreverence.
Oxymore: This marks Scottish Ballet dancer Sophie Laplane's debut as choreographer and is a brittle, geometric duet with futurist and techno-inspired phrasing. Susumu Yokota's music is as precise as the women's pointed limbs and mirroring, which is suggestive of sibling rivalry between sisters. Hugely impressive for a first commission...the future of ballet up close and personal.
Dance Odysseys has completed its run.
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