Scottish Dance Theatre Double Bill Review ★★★★★

Dundee-based Scottish Dance Theatre’s double bill, The Flock and Moving Cloud, currently at The Place, brings together two European female choreographers: Spain’s Roser López Espinosa and Italy’s Sofia Nappi, both of whom could claim to serve the company’s declared aim of ‘working at the forefront of the art form.’

That is very much in keeping with the direction in which its current director, Joan Clevillé, has been leading Scottish Dance Theatre since he took over in 2019, moving down ever more experimental paths.

López Espinosa’s The Flock is inspired by birds, their coordination in flight and the feats of endurance that characterise their migration. In its first section eight dancers in the V-formation of flocks in flight use their arms as wings in movements that become more purposeful until they take flight as it were, jumping off the ground while still flapping their wings. It’s a fascinating, mimetic sequence brought life by perfect synchronicity between the dancers.

Scottish Dance Theatre, The Flock. Photo: Brian Hartley

After a brief blackout the lights go up to reveal the dancers collapsed on the ground. Are they birds defeated by the effort of migration?Simply breaking their flight for a rest? Or were they killed by some ecological disaster?

At first one man tries in vain to raise them. Gradually some are brought to life and join in the effort to revive those that remain down.This section makes interesting use of the interplay between movement with intention and inertia, with unresisting bodies thrown up or swung around, but it goes on far too long. The same goes for the final section where, to a crescendo in Mark Drillich and Ilia Mayer’s electronic musical score, everybody spends an inordinate amount of time running around in circles, skilfully creating patterns that point to birds in flight. At about 40 minutes, The Flock rather overstays its welcome.

The Italian choreographer Sofia Nappi graduated from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre in New York and has since worked with the likes of Hofesh Shechter – there’s more than just a hint of Shechter’s manic approach to group dance in Moving Cloud (pictured top).

Set to Donald Shaw’s fiddle-heavy Scottish folk music, recorded by the band TRIP, there’s a party atmosphere to this piece. A man in a voluminous white smock and knee-high black socks kicks off the proceedings by slithering onto the stage, arms and torso undulating suggestive perhaps of a wind-buffeted cloud.

Others join him in dribs and drabs, Alison Brown’s loose and casual costumes making a nod to Scotland with the inclusion of one kilt.

They prance around the stage with abandon and increasing vim, sometimes as if each one of them is dancing for him or herself alone, sometimes engaging with each other. It’s lively, it’s fun, but it’s also inconsequential, despite the evident gusto and commitment of its nine dancers.

Scottish Dance Theatre's performances at The Place are part of a UK-wide tour.