Scottish Ballet, Theatre Royal, Glasgow

Mary Brennan

FIVE STARS

There’s a high octane shimmer of ‘who dares, wins!’ about this latest showing from Scottish Ballet. Originally designed as a double bill, the addition of Sophie Laplane’s Maze as a curtain-raiser was like a statement of risk-taking intent that carried through into the subsequent works – all three had a contemporary dynamic that re-energised our expectations of ‘ballet’.

For Laplane, a company member since 2004, this was her first choreographic foray onto the main-stage. Using only two couples, she filled the space with sequences of angst-y tensions, initially in duets between two men and then between two women before all four came together as if in resolution of their inner identity conflicts. There’s vivid characterisation in the counter-balancing tests of male strength, in the bopping-bounce of the party girlies but the astute angularities and gawky lines she weaves into the movement hint that togetherness is not necessarily a harmonious solution.

Motion of Displacement, a world premiere and a UK debut for American choreographer Bryan Arias takes inspiration from his mother’s risk-filled journey from El Salvador to America when she was just sixteen. A bare stage, bare light bulbs overhead, otherwise darkness and a sense of shadowy unknowns. A human chain downstage, everyone in uniform white vest/ sand-coloured chinos ending in a woman who breaks away. All five women in the ensemble will variously strike out on their own: Eve Mutso, for instance, will wander among a forest of bodies, watchful and vulnerable. The men, however, will tend towards rightful swaggering – their uncertainties channeled into assertiveness. The look and sound – music by John Adams and Bach – is minimalist but there’s an expressive richness to Arias’s choreography that catches the emotions of both a physical and spiritual journey with telling intensity. It ends, as it began: a lone woman leaving...

If Javier de Frutos is the established name on the bill, he doesn’t rest on any laurels. Instead, in a Scottish Ballet premiere, he re-styles Elsa Canasta (2003) into a walk on the wild side – or rather a slither into risqué manouevres on a sweeping staircase. Nick Holder imbues Cole Porter’s songs with wistful, even world-weary experience. The dancers use the stairs as a springboard into romantic couplings that won’t see the light of day. It’s athletic, erotic, witty and tinged with darkness, never more so than in the Apache-tussles between Sophie Martin and Erik Cavallari. Scottish Ballet dares at every stage – and oh how the audience wins!