Verdict: Four Stars
Independent Ballet
Cottier's Theatre, Glasgow
Gathered together, under the moniker of independentBALLET, voila! - three Scottish Ballet dancers stepping up to the Cottier's stage as choreographers in their own right.
Sophie Laplane and Constant Vigier have been in the public eye before, most recently during Fringe 2014 at Dance Base, but Jamiel Laurence was an unknown quantity.
His two short pieces ended the programme on a high of larky, mischievous humour anchored in well-crafted choreography.
In 1 to 10, two dudes deliver specific moves to numbers, initially re-iterated like a warm-up exercise but, as numbers get jumbled out of sequence, meaningful motifs emerge as when 9+2+5 adds up to the frazzling routine of a working day.
Barbershop Duets, to a medley of old popular songs, brought three couples together in vignettes of courtship where there was a cunning hint that musical harmonies might not hold true for relationships.
Lovely musicality, sweetly characterful dance - with the women on lively pointe - this has the makings of a crowd-pleasing one-act.
Constant Vigier's duet, Raw, was several tense, edgy steps away from last year's classically framed Stabat Mater - that Vigier is pushing himself out of any choreographic comfort zone was in evidence across the weekend, during Northern Ballet's showing of choreographic research projects.
As for Sophie Laplane - look out for her newest piece, Maze, as part of Scottish Ballet's autumn programme. At Cottier's, her duets - Puzzle and Oxymore - sizzled with the kind of sharp, attacking interactions of gesture and limb that speak (silent) volumes about the fallings in, and out, of fiercely physical coupledom.
The whole package - performed, as well as choreographed by Scottish Ballet dancers - was a classy start to Cottier's Dance Project season which runs until this Friday.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article