David Hughes Dance
David Hughes Dance
Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh
Mary Brennan
The umbrella title for this touring triple bill is Trialogue - but fate has seen fit to fix on the 'trial' part of the word, testing Hughes and associates with the last-minute illness of one of the dancers. Hours before curtain up at the Brunton on Friday, the whole programme had to be re-jigged.
Two works - Lucy Guerin's Soft Centre and Rafael Bonachela's 4: Freeze-Frame - had to be set aside. Instead, Hughes revived L'Apres Midi D'Un Faun, the long-ago solo that Siobhan Davies made for him. Passing years have, if anything, deepened his connection to Debussy's music so that his honed, athletic languor now has an almost elegaic timbre - as if the Faun, stretching and darting, is having a "carpe diem" moment. Also revived, Matthew Bourne's wickedly clever take on the classic Pas de Quatre where four chaps in gent's underwear are the mischievous equivalents of the four legendary ballerinas in the original. It's a frisky, cheeky, camp pastiche, danced with an easy precision that belied its sudden inclusion in the programme.
The only surviving element of the intended triple bill, Drei Seelen (Three Souls) - set to Moritz Eggert's The Raven Nevermore by Hughes and the company - has a shadowy, Brigadoon feel with a transparent gauze dividing the stage, and separating the dancers in their pied-tartan costumes from a mystical "other" world ruled by a shamanistic figure. The choreography picks up pleasingly on the moods within the music, while offering hints of the romance and conflicts that colour folk-tales and legends. How dispiriting, then, to learn that this valiant company has been a casualty of Creative Scotland's grant allocations. Having lost its regular funding, this tour could sadly be its last.
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