Scottish Ballet, Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, review: ‘Sometimes unwieldy, always whole-hearted’

Scottish Ballet’s new double bill for the Edinburgh Festival is ambitious, tough and danced with fierce conviction. It goes from the the wranglings of Angelin Preljocaj’s MC14/22 (Ceci est mon corps) to Crystal Pite’s monumental Emergence, in which dancers swarm like implacable insects. As a programme, it’s sometimes unwieldy, always whole-hearted.

Preljocaj’s work, created in 2000, puts a dozen bare-chested men through trust games, religious tableaux and long patterns of movement. The cast of twelve suggest Christ’s disciples; it opens with one man washing another, moving him into pietà-like poses. Behind them, men lie and twitch in a gridlike structure, to chiming patterns in Tedd Zahmal’s soundtrack.

The cast moves in unison, or they torment each other. Constant Vigier sings a work of devotion while two other men pull at his lips, punch him in the stomach or force their fingers into his mouth. Andrew Peasgood tries to repeat the same dance, even when Eado Turgeman binds him with packing tape, limiting his movements until he can only twitch.

In both cases, the adversity isn’t just being performed – actual harm seems a real possibility. It’s the work’s most memorable image, and its most self-indulgent. At 50 minutes, MC14 is too long. Preljocaj conjures up images of violence or brotherhood, but also gets stuck in repetitive sequences.

Crystal Pite is one of the most exciting choreographers working today, with a range that goes from intimate drama to huge sweeps of movement. The 2009 Emergence (part of Scottish Ballet’s autumn tour programme, was her first large-scale work for a ballet company. It shows her already massing large forces with powerful movement that creates its own emotional weight.

It opens with Sophie Martin curled on the ground, movement twitching and undulating through apparently boneless limbs. She’s like a creature emerging from a crysalis. Pite builds from this to disciplined swarms of dancers. Men arch in waves on the ground; women stalk on pointe, relentless and sharp. Owen Belton’s music rattles and hums. In Jay Gower Taylor’s set, black lines circle around a dark hole.

The corps dances create the sense of a hive mind at work. Large groups sprint in, then circle over a spot as if deciding where to go next – like groups of birds or insects, sharing an impulse. Elsewhere, the unison has a military quality. At their most relentless, the women count their patterns in a threatening hissed unison.

Together, Emergence and MC14 make an oddly-paced programme. But both works show this company dancing with strong technique and bold imagination.