New Year, New You: Creative Labs

“Essentially the Creative Labs offer physical space to create and think and actually be able to move and make your work happen,” says Jack Webb, one of Scotland’s promising young dancer choreographers. “In order to dance you need space and without funding I have no way of paying for that space so they actually provide me with the opportunity to make what's in my head a reality.”

Both Dance House and Dance Base offer Creative Labs to artists: a week of studio time, with no pressure to develop a complete work, but the freedom to investigate and explore. Although the companies who receive the lab often give classes during their stay, the labs are a rare example of support that does not demand a specific outcome.

There are, however, the sharings: usually on the Friday afternoon, although a recent Lab from Jakko Lehmus, formerly of Scottish Ballet, did conclude in a performance in The Arches. These sharings, advertised online, are free and give audiences the chance to see inside the choreographic process, and respond to the artists’ processes.

The last time that Gypsy Charms and Chris J Wilson were given a creative lab, they managed to come up with more than the expected short sharing. In one week, with a little help from Blonde Ambition and the indefatigable Des O’Connor, they choreographed an entire show, The Mating Ritual, which toured Scotland, visited London – pulling in guest star Kiki Kaboom, one of cabaret’s rising stars – and suggesting that burlesque is actually capable of sustaining intelligent, humorous shows that have narrative as well as striptease.

The Mating Ritual took a humorous look at the various courtship rituals of the past century. Now, the team has returned for another lab."We are delighted to be given the opportunity by Dancehouse to create more cabaret mayhem," laughs Gypsy. "The Odd Ball burlesques famous partnerships and manipulates 'cabaret space' using a cocktail of dance, comedy and music."

In Edinburgh, lab residents will include Plan B – hot from their successful revival of A Wee Home From Home, sometime Jack Webb collaborator Lucy Boyes and Tom Pritchard, who is also involved with Dance House's Contemporary Community Company. The vitality of Scottish dance owes a great deal to the support of these two venues.