Dance

Scottish Dance Theatre: double bill

Traverse, Edinburgh

Mary Brennan

****

ONE new work - The Circle, choreographed by Emanuel Gat - now links up rather cleverly with Ritualia from last year. What connects them, even though they are significantly different in movement vocabularies and temperament, is the way both pieces look at the nature of community and how individuals fit in with the group dynamic ... or not.

In Colette Sadler’s Ritualia, the ground rules hark back to Bronislava Nijinska’s 1923 ballet, Les Noces and the ingrained traditions that govern the marriage of a Russian peasant couple. Here, the customs that Sadler evokes to the backbone of Stravinsky’s music are the self-aware rituals of being uber-cool. The plaited braids that featured in Nijinska’s ballet are now fashion-forward accessories, the top-heavy wigs looming in sharp contrast to the black unisex body-skins that accentuate the dancers’ every move, be it edgy-angularity or sensual shimmy. The Bride, however, is ultimately ‘roped in’ - encased in snarls of braids...

For Gat, the ensemble that briefly stands together at the start is essentially the sum of its parts - and those parts, namely SDT’s 12 dancers, are encouraged to go their own way, explore steps and ideas as individuals, interact with others as and when the moment feels right or someone else joins in and your dance morphs into a duet or a trio.

There’s a challenge here that shrugs aside the comfort zone of a set choreography, although during the forthcoming tour who knows if Gat’s vision of impromptu responses and connections will make The Circle truly different every night. Tracks from Squarepusher’s Ultravisitor album (recorded live) drum out a kind of visceral energy that the dancers - clad in a rag-bag of swags and bustles that over-ride body-lines and gender - translate into riffs on spins, jumps, balances and runs. There is a constant watchfulness that sees dancers coinciding - the circle that is SDT remains unbroken, even when ‘self’ seems to take priority over unity.