Scottish Ballet premiered "Entress," a new work by British choreographer Julia Cheng about pain and transformation, at the Theatre Royal in Glasgow on Thursday. The piece opened with a large suspended cloth moving above a single dancer.
Cheng's piece opened a new program from Scotland's national dance company, which closed the night with the return of "Emergence," a work by Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite that had not been performed in the country for ten years.
The two works turned the Theatre Royal stage into strikingly different worlds over the course of the evening.
A tale of transformation
In "Entress," the solitary dancer beneath the suspended cloth was gradually joined by other performers dressed in dark tones. Music punctuated by the sound of falling drops accompanied what unfolded as a kind of transformation narrative, as the suspended structure continued to move overhead.
Before the performance, Scottish Ballet's artistic director and chief executive, Christopher Hampson, described the piece to the audience as "brave" and "distinctive," and noted that it was the first time Cheng had created work for a ballet company.
From pain to rebirth
The title "Entress" comes from an old Scottish word meaning "right of entry" or "entrance." The work grew out of Cheng's reflections on conflict, pain and destruction, exploring resilience and the possibility of starting over.
Cheng, who has been nominated for an Olivier Award for her choreography on "Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club," also has a background in hip hop and urban dance. The Olivier Awards recognise achievement in London theatre.
Rituals, mythology, metamorphosis and architecture were among the influences behind the piece, which Cheng developed together with the dancers. It features an original score by British composer Isobel Waller-Bridge with percussion by Beibei Wang.
According to comments provided by the company, Cheng said the central theme of "Entress" was transforming pain and suffering into power and rebirth, linking that transformation to releasing emotion and finding common ground.
The architecture of the swarm
After the intermission, "Emergence" shifted the visual language entirely. Lights, shadows and geometric shapes surrounded the dancers as they moved from individual gestures to coordinated formations, with the sound of their footsteps at times becoming part of the score.
In some passages, whispered voices counted numbers as the dancers' bodies gathered and scattered across the stage, reinforcing the sense of watching the parts of a single organism.
Hampson had earlier described the work as "the architecture of the hive mind."
Drawing on swarm intelligence and the collective behaviour of animals in nature, "Emergence" returns to Scotland a decade after its last showing there, reworked by Pite, one of the leading figures in contemporary dance and a five-time winner of the Olivier Awards, British theatre's top honours.
The Canadian choreographer, who first staged "Emergence" in 2009 with the National Ballet of Canada, has made changes to adapt it for Scottish Ballet's current dancers.
In comments provided by the company, Pite said she wanted to keep the work alive and evolving, adding that working with new performers allowed her to discover different possibilities rather than reproducing the original creation exactly.
What's next
Both pieces received extended applause, with some audience members standing at the end of the performances, an especially enthusiastic reaction following "Emergence."
The program continues in Glasgow until September 12 before travelling to Aberdeen and Edinburgh.
