The Stage

A Visitation/I Thought I heard Somebody Calling/The Long and the Short of it

Published Friday 20 February 2009 at 14:00 by Thom Dibdin

There is an ephemeral feel to this programme of new work from Scottish Dance Theatre, yet the shadows, reflections and ghostly apparitions which define it promise a bit more than they deliver. There is, however, substance to SDT Artistic Director Janet Smith’s ensemble piece I Thought I Heard Someone Calling and Ina Christel Johannessen’s gentle ghost story, A Visitation.

First, Caroline Bowditch (SDT’s Dance Agent for Change) and Tom Pritchard (SDT’s tallest dancer) perform The Long and the Short of it, a piece in which she grooves away with him behind, providing her shadow. Partly a representation of her work in dance and disability, this exploration of manipulation also sets the scene for the two major works.

Smith’s piece proves fascinating in its use of dance moves created by an individual that get mimicked even as they are happening and worked into the ensemble. This organic infection of creativity provides a sinuous, grounded performance to Christopher Benstead’s ambient electronic-dance music. But it is lighting designer Bruno Poet’s use of reflective dance surfaces which provides the most memorable element to a piece that, while pleasing the eye, does not do enough to sustain intellectual curiosity over its 40 minutes.

A Visitation, based on a Bruno Schultz short story, sees manipulation between ghosts and mortals as Naomi Murray’s drowned bride attempts to dance with a series of tartan-clad young men. Kathrine Tolo’s costumes and Keiron Sweeney’s mannequins create a suitably gothic ambience as Murray succeeds in making herself felt and seen by the fleshly dancers, before ghosts and humans conspire to bring her to rest.