Scottish Dance Theatre, Dundee review: 'conviction and emotional intelligence'

Scottish Dance Theatre: Rotten Work & The Game of Life, Dundee Rep ★★★★

The constant reinvention dance companies have to embrace can be both a challenge and a gift. Celebrating its 40th year in 2026, Scottish Dance Theatre has seen multiple crops of dancers plant their feet, grow, then move on. Each brought something different to the stage, but one thing remained constant – they had to blend as an ensemble. So it’s fitting that new piece, Rotten Work, created for this special anniversary, turns eight individuals into one inter-connected organism. 

Choreographer Emilie Leriche has woven an invisible string between them, fostering a tender sense of comradeship, but not without edge. Arms, legs and hips are nudged and re-directed by the hands, elbows and knees of others, while collective pauses, almost tableau-like in their construction, punctuate the action with sharp precision. Whether the repeated dialogue peppering the movement (“I remember falling”, “Turn out the light”) adds to the otherwise abstract beauty of the piece is up for debate.

If Rotten Work occasionally feels like a dynamic game of Barrel of Monkeys, Edouard Hue’s The Game of Life was literally inspired by the Soma Cube (a 3x3x3 puzzle of interlocking pieces). Aided by Jonathan Soucasse’s enjoyably beat-heavy score, Hue’s choreography is reminiscent of an arcade game. Dancers scuttle across the floor, stopping briefly to reach up or down, as if bouncing an invisible basketball. The ticks and calls of a cuckoo clock, incorporated by Soucasse, hint at how those confined dancing figures would behave if freed from their wooden chamber.

READ MORE: 'Dance is vulnerable' - Joan Clevillé on the past, present and future of Scottish Dance Theatre

Both works benefit from performers who move assuredly with every step, be it taut or fluid, dancing with emotional intelligence and conviction. In short, 40 looks good on them. When artistic director, Joan Clevillé walked on stage at the end of the performance, clutching the National Dance Award for Best Mid-Scale Company (picked up in London earlier in the week), his proud beam said it all. 

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