OneTouch Theatre, Eden Court, Inverness, 1 November 2011

HAPPY birthday to Scottish Dance Theatre, 25 years old this year, reaching the age in life when maturity and confidence start to get the upper hand.

IT certainly took confidence to open a touring programme with the ruthless honesty of the Dead Kennedys’ ‘Too Drunk to F***’, and it took maturity to choose the delightful Nouvelle Vague version. Kate Weare’s lovely Lay Me Down Safe was feted during its run in the Edinburgh Fringe. It is a delight to report that it has now developed the utterly satisfying lyrical flow that comes to a work when it’s well worn in, especially when danced by a skilled company as close-knit as Scottish Dance Theatre.

Scottish Dance Theatre - Lay Me Down Safe by Kate Weare (photographer Nicole Guarino)

Dressed in tunics of subtly different cut in shades of grey, blue and aqua with only the tiniest flash of red trim, the dancers coped effortlessly with an extensive vocabulary of movement and made dancing with shadows, moving like automata, stamping round the stage, and startling like meerkats look as natural as breathing out and breathing in. Highlights of the piece were a strange, clockwork, copulatory tango and a particularly fine duet for Solene Weinachter and James MacGillivray shortly before a visual pun on ‘le petit mort’ brought things to a sudden, shocking close.

The OneTouch audience was full of young dancers-to-be whose necks craned when Weinachter slipped into the audience to watch the second half of the programme, Khaos, by another American choreographer, Benjamin Levy. There was more to love in this work, in which the dancers were artfully interwoven in constantly moving and flowing arrangements, any moment of which would have made a stunning photograph.

Scottish Dance Theatre - Natalie Trewinnard in Khaos by Benjamin Levy (photographer Andy Ross 2011)

So far so good, but the designer had included two parachute/inflatable cocoon elements and it required considerable concentration to ignore the noise of the pump required to inflate these, and the random jerky movements as they inflated. However, it was probably worth it for the final segment when Nataie Trewinnard, after an exemplarily seamless tumbling, stumbling solo, danced a duet with what by this time appeared to be a vast, alien lifeform.

A nicely judged, highly enjoyable evening by a company which will be one to watch for the next 25 years as well.

© Jennie Macfie, 2011

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• Scottish Dance Theatre
• Jennie Macfie