Choreographers: Sophie Laplane (Dive), Cayetano Soto (Schachmatt), Dickson Mbi (Twice-Born)
Scottish Ballet’s inventive programme begins with the pre-show film, Dive, choreographed by Sophie Laplane and co-created by Laplane and James Bonas. It’s simply dazzling, each image strange and captivating. Inspired by Yves Klein’s famous shade of blue, the palette is limited to blue and white. Scenes shift between white-clad dancers moving in stately ways to Schubert and vivid bursts of aggressive rock, dancers in blue, or naked, breathing out blue smoke. It’s both highly controlled and surreal. At one moment, a llama trots through the dancers. A lovely work. It was shown at the Venice Biennale in 2021 and won Jury Best Price at Cinedans 2022.
Spanish choreographer Cayetano Soto’s Schachmatt (Checkmate!) dazzles in a different way. All played out on a giant chessboard, it’s inspired by American choreographer Bob Fosse. Soto offers a compelling vision of the synchronised dancers moving in endlessly strange mechanical ways, surreally dressed in matching shirts, ties and hot pants along with knitted riding helmets. It’s funny and strange, the highly stylised movements bring to mind one of those modernist images of the London Underground by Cyril Power, abstracting the forces of speed to curved lines.
The central piece of the evening is the new commission for Scottish Ballet, Twice-Born by highly-regarded choreographer Dickson Mbi. Mbi’s background is in contemporary dance and popping, so he promises to bring a very different vision to his work. It’s a big piece, with a huge, impressive set designed by Ruby Law. It begins in darkness as ominous sounds of thunder rumble. Gradually we start to see a huge rock face, with pale shafts of light, suggesting we are inside a vast cave. Mbi is not just the creator, choreographer and director, but the composer of Twice-Born’s extended music score.
The vision is certainly compelling with the pounding music and dramatic roars and crashes as primitive creatures move crab-like to gather round a central female. But from the start, there’s an uncomfortable echo of 2001: A Space Odyssey. And because Mbi leans too heavily on narrative, this sense intensifies. The title doesn’t help, signalling the story arc before the piece even begins. After the sheer visual strangeness of Dive and Schachmatt, Twice-Born seems oddly conventional.
The choreography, in particular, depends on a good deal of familiar movements and gestures. There’s an over-reliance on the dancers holding their arms in the air as if they’re about to start a Scottish country dance, or flipping movements of their hands to suggest antlers or ears. There’s also rather too much stylised circling of the ensemble bearing rocks and far too much of those crab-like postures. Overall Mbi’s choreographic vocabulary doesn’t extend sufficiently to justify the considerable length of the piece.
His music score, likewise, is too inclined to tell us a story, forever seeking to ramp up the sense of drama, adding in the articulation of strange words and sounds. But this quickly becomes repetitive, losing any sense of real drama. At the heart of the piece, there is a clash between one tribe and another. Both are matriarchal, worshipping the powerful female who leads them.
To be honest, it’s not a new story, and Twice-Born suffers from this. There are certainly some striking moments when the ensemble comes together in interesting ways and the dancers themselves are superb. But Twice-Born doesn’t give them the opportunity to demonstrate their range.
Runs until 8 March 2025
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Strange visions
