OneTouch Theatre, Eden Court, Inverness, 16 April, 2009

Janet Smith's I Thought I Heard Somebody Calling (Photo - Matthew Andrews)

THERE WAS a time not so long ago when Eden Court was actively and successfully developing its dance audience, so it was deeply disappointing to see the OneTouch Theatre barely half full for the first night of SDT’s new tour.

A round robin email from the marketing department saying, inter alia, “I know it’s short notice, but if you’ve nothing planned tonight or tomorrow then you could do much worse than see SDT’s stuunning (sic) dancers do their stuff” should be filed under “too little, too late”.

Those who had managed to buy a ticket were treated to another breathtakingly good programme from this world-class Scottish company, including a new work by Artistic Director Janet Smith, whose choreography is never less than innovative and thoughtful.

I Thought I Heard Somebody Calling was no exception, containing an internal narrative which was always coherent to the dancers, in marked contrast to several works which have been shown on this and the Empire stage in the last few years. Smith has welded together a company of superb dancers, strong on technique, with a beautiful fluidity, deft lightness, and who can genuinely act.

If film-making has been likened by cinematographers to “painting with light”, then choreography is surely “painting with moving bodies”, and the canvas of this piece was soon covered with extraordinary scenes that recalled anything from meerkats emerging from their burrows or children in the playground to Madonna’s “Vogue” video, all bound together in the consistency of a dream.

It incorporated some of the best lighting design I have ever seen on a stage (Bruno Poet), and beautifully thought through naturalistic costumes (Paul Shriek) which were often stretched and tugged to great effect. Alvin Ailey did something similar decades ago, but this was straight off the street.

The evening opened with The Long And The Short Of It, a short work by Caroline Bowditch, SDT’s Artist for Change, whose presence and chutzpah are in inverse proportion to her stature. Challenging preconceptions of all kinds, this duet with the company’s tallest dancer, Tom Pritchard, was snappily mesmerising.

The Visitation, which closed the evening, was mesmerising in an entirely different way. Costumed by Kathrine Tolo and once again lit with sensitivity by Bruno Poet, Ina Christel Johannessen’s choreography felt at first dream-like, and then became something of a European surrealist film, with which Bunuel, Fellini, Bergman and Chabrol would have felt at home.

Surreally sinister and touching by turns, puppets and mannequins were carried on stage. At times, it was hard to tell which of the bodies standing or slumped at the rear of the stage were dancers and which were costumed puppets. Ghostly revenants flowed and ebbed like waves amongst tartan clad dancers; tables were rapped and ectoplasm crept from under a chest – what did it all mean?

The work held its secrets tantalisingly out of reach but no matter, it was impossible not to be riveted by the dancing. Never was a move anticipated, each and every step seemed spontaneous, the result of a sudden impulse; this is the Holy Grail of dance, and it is an absolute tragedy that so few were there to witness it.

Particular bouquets to James MacGillivray and Ruth Janssen whose dancing goes from strength to strength, and to Naomi Murray whose tireless, eerily winsome Bride was straight out of a Japanese horror movie.

Scottish Dance Theatre are at the OneTouch Theatre again tonight (17 April 2009).

© Jennie Macfie, 2009

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