Playing as part of the Festival Fringe’s Made in Scotland Showcase, the Dundee-based Scottish Dance Theatre blew into the Zoo Southside venue with their double bill of The Flock, choreographed by Roser López Espinosa in conjunction with the company, and Sofia Nappi’s Moving Cloud.
The Flock (L’estol), originally made in 2017 in Espinosa’s native Catalonia, was inspired by the fascinating and mysterious migration of birds and, by chance, was being staged here just as the swallows were lining up on our telegraph wires in preparation for leaving. It began rather meditatively with an introductory passage that had the full company, knees flexed and arms swinging experimentally higher and higher, preparing for flight, but then, after a momentary blackout, exhausted bodies lay littered about the stage.
One dancer, notional team-leader, stalked the stage, rearranging and reviving the fallen. Gradually, others awoke and, in pairs and trios, lifted and passed bodies seamlessly from one to another, the flock working in unison. Some of this earthbound passage, reflecting the perilous nature of the migratory journey and the sad fact that not all travellers survive, was perhaps a little drawn-out. But then they were up and off again, jogging around the stage, sometimes outdoing each other in the way that, in flight, the flock-leader gives way to another. The shape of the group changed as they circled, suggesting shifting flight patterns and those seen in, for example, the murmurations of starlings as they mass for roosting (OK, that’s not migration but let’s not quibble: it’s just as mysterious).
Given what went before, the title of the second piece, Moving Cloud, might have suggested a connection between the two but – how wrong could I be? With the eruption onto the stage of a man in a white see-though nightie and black knee-socks, it was clear we were in for something completely different. Was anybody else in the audience put in mind of Burns’ poem Tam O’Shanter, in which the hapless Tam strays into a churchyard where a coven of witches are dancing, led by one in a ‘cutty sark’ – a short shirt?
Whether the choreographer had this in mind or not, to the music of TRIP, the high-flying six-piece modern-Celtic music group from Glasgow, we were plunged into what felt like the maddest ceilidh you’ve ever been in. Bizarrely-costumed dancers (thank you, designer Alison Brown, for including at least one kilt) entered, solo-d, disappeared, seemed to argue with each other – and sometimes unseen others – or just did their own happy thing. Impossible to describe the choreography, other than as a mix of street dance, hiphop and contemporary, and all at extraordinary speed, it was dazzlingly obscure. Caught up in the whole thing, the audience clapped along enthusiastically to the music – something I’ve never seen in a dance performance before, but nobody seemed to mind. The music was recorded but for two weekend performances TRIP were playing live. That must have been quite some show…