Dance International Glasgow
Meg Stuart & Tim Etchells: Shown and Told
Tramway, Glasgow
Mary Brennan
four stars
TIME was – in the 1990s – that American dance-maker Meg Stuart performed at Glasgow’s CCA as part of Nikki Milican’s New Moves seasons. We glimpsed Stuart’s work again, in 1999, on the Edinburgh International Festival in a collaborative piece called Appetite. After that, zilch. Tim Etchells and the company he co-founded, Forced Entertainment, used to come to Glasgow a lot, but 2013 was the last sighting with two shows at Tramway. So to find both artists making a long overdue return signalled a treat was in store – finding that they were in tandem on-stage smacked somewhat of a left-field blind date, or a potential smorgasbord of chalk and cheese.
What you do get, in the course of an hour, are assorted bits and pieces of talk and movement: it’s up to you to jigsaw them together – a process that might not resolve until days later. While Stuart hunkers, stretches, steps out across the space with a lovely elasticity of limb, Etchells burrows into his treasure trove of words in an attempt to describe her actions. It’s the beginning of various exchanges where they explore each other’s “vocabulary”. Etchells is not a dancer, but he does dash about a bit, while Stuart’s engagement with the spoken word reveals a flair for droll comments, not least when telling us why she dances. Often playful, but always with an underlying serious intention, Shown and Told is a cleverly quirky, thought-provoking duet on the theme of communication. To which I’ll say: come back soon. The good news is that Etchells is doing just that, when Forced Ent appear at this year's Edinburgh International Festival.
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