Dance @ The Arches

After a strong showing at last year's Fringe – Dance Base's programme was exceptionally successful –Scottish based dance is threatening to become more than a minority enthusiasm. In the quiet of January, The Arches is staging two double bills that showcase some of the dancers set to rise from the underground.

The pairing of Jack Webb and Rosalind Masson is an intriguing juxtaposition of Webb's tough, jagged style and Masson's more fluid approach. Webb has been exploring a disorientating, almost acrobatic dance that owes a great deal to the masterful tensions of Iona Kewney's movement, while Masson essays an elegant blend, based on improvisation. Quartet puts them side-by-side, choreographing for each other as well as taking solos. It is certainly an exciting advance from their Fringe shows: Webb's edgy Live Art attack was a startling contrast against Masson's meditation on environmental destruction.

Second up are a couple of artists basing their process in improvisation. Coming out of his group improvisation sessions over the past year, Tom Pritchard is taking a solo, I'm Glad You're Here, For A Moment, I Lost Myself: Loic Lelande and Alterraxis take a fixed narrative and improvise through the story.

Pritchard is an energetic presence in the Glasgow dance community, running contact improvisation jams and holding his On the Stage of the Present as an ongoing multi-disciplinary journey. Pritchard typically uses text as well as movement: the decision to go solo perhaps inspired by his success in Smallpetitklein's Falling Man. Lelande is a newer voice, having worked with Penny Chivas – who also worked with Pritchard and is currently part of Plan B's ceilidh revolutionaries. 

Through these two events, The Arches is making an early statement of support for dance as 2012's surprise success.