Fray, Cottier's Theatre, Glasgow
Mary Brennan , FOUR STARS
Last Friday, the Cottier Dance Project ended a week of richly varied programming in a blaze of brilliance with the premiere of Fray. Throughout the week a recurring theme had been the partnering up of movement and live music - an all-too-rare occurrence, especially outwith the national dance companies. For Fray, it was Daniel's Beard at the music stands: performing works by Christopher Rathbone, Nadia Boulanger and Penderecki with a finesse that went sympathetically hand-in-foot with choreographer Diana Loosmore's creative invention while retaining the integrity of the scores themselves.
Loosmore's new work had, at its core, the behavioural facets encompassed by the phrase "flight or flight" - not just the physical stances of defensive-aggression or self-preserving bursts of sprinting speed, but the internal conflicts that seethe with indecision over staying or going when relationships turn awkward. One overall concept, then, but - in responding to the very different moods and tone colours of the music - three very different (if inter-linked) pieces with the five members of High Heart Dance Company, impressively agile and spirited in expressing the dynamic shifts within the movement.
With three of the company - including the lone male - all in black, and the other two women in pale tops, the eye could easily pick up on the oppositional undertow that tugged even when limbs were interlocking in intense duets. Thrillingly pliant bodies spoke of tensions and attractions, wariness and resolve as friskiness shaded into calm (Rathbone's Daniel's Razor), or limpid sweeps of cello and piano turned jazzy (Boulanger's Trois Pieces) before Penderecki's Sextet introduced shards of brassy swagger offset by swithers of wary musings. Memorable for all the best reasons - and a personal triumph for dancer Freya Jeffs who also curated the whole Dance Project.
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