Meitheal / The Embers of Glencoe, Cottier's Theatre, Glasgow
Mary Brennan
TWO STARS
In 1973, Walter Gore choreographed a short work to a purely percussive score by the Scottish composer Thomas Wilson. It was called The Embers of Glencoe and if you scour through Scottish Ballet's archives, you'll discover that the company - then performing as Scottish Theatre Ballet - included it in their autumn tour. It vanished from the repertoire soon after. Some forty years later, only the name of the ballet and Wilson's score were still in evidence until some students from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS) decided to breathe new life into those forgotten embers.
Wilson's thrumming percussion was delivered with snap and alacrity by The Lads at the Back (the RSNO's Simon Lowden and John Poulter) while a new strand of traditionally-inflected music was composed by cellist Rufus Huggan, a student on the RCS's Scottish Music course. The most ambitious challenge - that of choreographing a response to this new composite score - fell to Emma McBeth who, along with ten other dancers, represented the RCS's BA Modern Ballet course on-stage. All told, it was a valiant effort.
However the dance floor at Cottier's is really not large enough to let eleven bodies dance out, so the ensemble sections felt embattled in a counterproductive way. Brief solos and duets hinted at choreographic skills, and there was never any doubt that the dancers - like the musicians - were giving of their best.
Choreographer Rob Heaslip has been configuring Meitheal for a couple of years now: this latest showing, by max.IMEALLdance, saw Heaslip and a quartet of female dancers in black tunics weaving in and out of patternings rooted in a sense of community - an image fulfilled by the interactive rapport of the dancers themselves.
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