The Flock and Moving Cloud
Scottish Dance Theatre, Zoo Southside, Edinburgh

IN a festival strewn with autobiography and confessional stand-up, it’s arresting to witness the facial neutrality of a dance troupe bent on conveying the ideas of an objective author. 

Scottish Dance Theatre (the only full-time contemporary dance company extant north of the border) invites dance makers from far afield to their Dundee base. The visitors encounter a team with the discipline and skill to stick to a choreographic script, in conduit-mode.

SDT’s current double bill (at Zoo Southside and touring Britain until the end of September) opens with The Flock, a buy-in production initially staged in Catalonia. Migratory bird behaviours are cited as inspiration. 

Creature imitation is always a safe topic; yet these performers retain much that is human, including a non-avian propensity for casual dress. We witness calisthenics amid a mathematical sequence. An insistent beat falls silent, the lights go out. Scene two starts with a haunting image of where all are heaped in states of apparent collapse. Survivors self-nominate. They gradually revive the comatose. 

At the rigorous behest of choreographer Roser Lopez Espinoza we are all drawn into this powerful episode and its feats of weight-bearing. Sculptural acrobatics ensue, where some behave as jugglers’ semi-animate implements, albeit life-sized and in enigmatic states of deep conscious trust.

Fascination diminishes when the dancers, soloists now, begin to enact high-risk, high maintenance moves using the currency of a global contemporary dance movement. The repeated flash of credentials keeps this viewer at arm’s length, especially when pack manoeuvres accumulate. There again, poignancy is present in measurable achievement — how this results from years of investment, vulnerability and commitment. Individual prowess “takes a village,” as we know. Being in this audience was akin to being part of that village.

The Flock’s varied registers of watchability invoke distanced thinking: following an interval A Moving Cloud proves refreshingly immediate. The vibe here is one of second wind. Stocking-footed guests seem to have snuck down for a nocturnal fridge-raid in some baronial kitchen. Nightshirts a-billow, they catalyse each other to a pre-dawn romp. 

Traditional Celtic music is played live by TRIP at some performances — though not acoustically (sigh). This sound world is perfect for a dance we might be doing. Must we be wallflowers? 

With adroit flair, Sofia Nappi finds a choreographic language of impulse and detail that is fully involving for dancer and witness. We are looking at a rich multimedia counterpoint. 

Conduit changes to ownership. Our venue is packed to the rafters. These were raised.

Runs until August 25. Box office: (0131) 662-6892, zoovenues.co.uk; On tour in Britain until September 28. For more information see: dundeerep.co.uk.