Still @ Zoo Southside

Dundee-based dance company Smallpetitklein presents a double bill at Zoo Southside – the dance piece Stiller and a short film Thinking Out Loud, choreographed and directed by Thomas Small.

The audience enters the theatre to a still figure looming over projected images of war. As she begins to move, the images become grey static, and the tenuous connection to war is lost until later in the piece. Hayley Dixon performs with a delicious blend of tension, introspective movement and flung limbs. What follows is a work that contains easily recognisable contemporary dance vocabulary, a little too dictated by the soundtrack. Yet tossed arms and legs, powerful floor work, and the opening/closing of torso and arms build an energetic and stimulating work. Arms extend into unfurling wings, and are then thrown expansively to generate power and violence.

A short solo by Tom Pritchard is a beautiful moment, utilising his soft, yet gangly style, before the choreography takes off. Sections of unison from the performers are too carefully constructed, becoming predictable. The virtuosity of the choreography is more dynamic as movement between dancers crosses over, switching between unison duets.

More development of the partnering work is needed: the classic male-female lifts feature repeated leg movements and a male duet hints at interest but becomes a contrived contact improvisation jam.

Only the torso and head of a dance creature are visible throughout the haunting film Thinking Out Loud, fading in and out over larger and smaller sequences of one man. This is an engaging film, the nature of the projection intensifies this: emerging from a triangular shape along the back of the stage.