The North Tramway Glasgow
Your Image Alt Text

The North

Marine Furet
With its playful exploration of disorientation, The North, which premiered at the Tramway last weekend, opens up many possibilities ...
Velvet Petal Scottish Dancer Theatre
Your Image Alt Text

Velvet Petal

S.A. McCracken
What does the controversial photography of Robert Mapplethorpe have in common with the life cycle of a ...
Your Image Alt Text

Rosalind

Marine Furet
Wth this new production, James Cousins pares down Shakespeare’s comedy As You Like it to its gender-shifting heroin, the titular Rosalind, who disguis...
Welcome to Dance International Glasgow (or DIG Festival) where I’m at The Tramway, home of Scottish Ballet, for the world premiere of their new production, Each Other. This piece, created by Dutch-Israeli choreographers Ivgi and Greben, is an exploration of borders, of division and unity. Tom Parkinson’s score was created in studio with the dancers as they rehearsed, and therefore responds to, rather than dictates the choreography. An electronic thrum is broken by the occasional piano melody, but more often than not, by a sound like boots crunching on gravel. The stage is covered in shoes: trainers, pumps, boots, heels, all scattered across the floor at random. A few dancers in ragged, flesh-tone clothes rearrange the shoes to create barriers, islands of bare floor, and paths between these spaces. Why shoes? They come to evoke so many things during the show: all of the shoes a ballet dancer must go through during their career; individuals lost in a consumerist wasteland; the famous archive of shoes on display at Auschwitz, and the increasing comparisons between contemporary politics and events building up to WW2. The wealth of possible interpretations is one reason why I’ll be thinking about this production for some time. Ivgi and Greben’s choreography creates the illusion of contact improvisation, and is heavily influenced by contemporary dance, with the occasional traditional ballet flourishes and stag leaps. The company moves in and out of unison, pulsing with the score in clannish formations. Yaron Abulafia’s lighting design is subtle and atmospheric, creating a searchlight effect in the frantic border-building scenes, or when the dancers tear down these barriers of shoes. The one comic scene –where a dancer shuffles slowly onto the stage carrying an impossible number of shoes – takes a dark turn as he is buried alive beneath them by the rest of the company. We’re treated to an extraordinary solo by Kayla-Maree Tarantolo, the rebel character who walks along the top of the wall of shoes, instead of choosing sides. Taratolo’s solo tells her character’s story through a range of contortionist-like movements before reaching an ecstatic, breathless conclusion – which is something like what you’ll be feeling after you watch this production. Each Other engages adeptly with the International theme of DIG festival, inviting us to question the purpose and consequences of borders within and between nations, as well as the role of the individual in the crowd.al
Your Image Alt Text

Scottish Ballet: Each Other

S.A. McCracken
Welcome to Dance International Glasgow (or DIG Festival) where I’m at The Tramway, home of Scottish Ballet, for the world premiere of their new produc...
Wolves, Barrowland Ballet, Glasgow Tramway
Your Image Alt Text

Wolves

Marine Furet
Barrowland Ballet’s latest creation Wolves gives body and voice to ideas of community, transmission and conflict in this inventive and uplifting produ...
Your Image Alt Text

#negrophobia

S.A. McCracken
#negrophobia is a searing, multimedia exploration of attitudes towards black male bodies. The production defies categorisation, blending poetry, dance...
Your Image Alt Text

Guerrilla

Marine Furet
Presented as part of the international selection of the festival Take Me Somewhere in Glasgow, Guerrilla envisions a future of increasing political un...
Your Image Alt Text

Brocade

S.A. McCracken
The Tramway Studio 4 is not so much in the round as in the rectangle. The ceilings are high and the stage is bare. Four dancers face the wall. There’s...