Dance International Glasgow

Joan Cleville Dance: The North

four stars

Simone Kenyon: Into the Mountain

three stars

Tramway, Glasgow

Mary Brennan

CHOREOGRAPHER Joan Cleville not only has a finely-tuned understanding of the absurd in life, he has the wit and craft to translate that into exceptional dance. Plan B for Utopia (2015) was his company’s widely-acclaimed debut piece. Now, with The North, he takes the surreal into a realm that is both ridiculously entertaining and chillingly dark – indeed, it could be that land “from whose bourn no traveller returns” as Shakespeare conjured it. The stage is bare, except for one little fir tree. Two figures stride on, dragging a large polythene bag: this is a clue that will haunt subsequent events. Inside is John (Kendall), comatose and definitely lost. His finders (perhaps keepers) are two women, Eve Ganneau and Solene Weinachter, in sensible Nordic jumpers, improbable gold leggings and party-time antlers. It’s the North, John, but not exactly as any of us know it.

A thundering of Wagner on the sound-score hints at Valkyries and mythic forces, Weinachter’s hilarious quacking-squawking vocalisations – pure gobblydegook to a despairing Kendall – are the stuff of alien encounters while she, and Ganneau, are adept at morphing into wildlife of a scary, howling kind. Are they angels or demons? Like Kendall’s John, we’re left to imagine the best, and the worst. Little toy cars, an avalanche of snow that covers the stage in tiny, mountain peaks, suggest a back-story while the dance itself, full of conflicted impulses, gangling elasticity and fabulous squirmings, has a shape-shifting dynamic that wrenchingly echoes John’s quest for certainties in an uncertain time and place. Utterly more-ish – look out for it at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Simone Kenyon, like Cleville is currently an Associate Artist at Tramway, and like Cleville she has a distinctive aesthetic. Into the Mountain sees her skim stones into a symbolic Cairngorms landscape, traverse a climbing wall in Tramway 4, negotiate gales and mist as if braving the elements when mountaineering. There’s prowess in the movement, imagination in how she evokes settings, but too much is telescoped into one hour. This needs to be a longer, durational solo for us to experience the journey with her.