Photo: Linus Enlund

@ Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, on Sat 21 Nov 2015

Temperamentally, Scotland and the Nordic countries do have much in common, and there is a rich seam of creative energy to be tapped from artistic collaborations between them. Indeed historically, Scottish artists have been involved with many highly successful joint projects with their Nordic counterparts, and NordDance, a new dance festival from Dance Base that celebrates Nordic and Scottish dance, demonstrates just how productive these can be.

The two nights of Scottish/Nordic dance take place at the Traverse Theatre, and represent the culmination of over two years work that has included international exchanges, residencies and workshops. This is an eclectic mix of dance with its roots firmly in hip hop and street dance—dance that is new, experimental and edgy.

The second of the two nights begins with the Edinburgh-based Room 2 Manoeuvre’s Without a Hitch, a blend of hip hop, physical theatre and contemporary dance. It is very much a work in progress, the overarching shape of the work still somewhat rough and the delivery and timing of the words unpolished. However, the dance itself is very tight and focussed, with a beautiful uncluttered visual vocabulary, and performed with the seeming ease that only a high level of technical proficiency can produce.

Next in the programme is a piece by the Swedish group JUCK, which is full of incredible, raw energy tempered with a large dose of Nordic humour. The dancers immediately take control of the whole space, breaking down the barriers between performers and audience while steadily confronting the audience’s gaze.

The thrusting pelvic movements (JUCK is Swedish for “hump”) are less about receiving pleasure and much more about just taking it—owning it—as if for the gratification of the dancers rather than viewers per se. There is no acknowledgement of the applause: the performance wasn’t really for us. Everything about this is good, from the great use of spatial perspective, its contrast between action and inaction, its playfulness and its power.

Finally, Tentacle Tribe’s Nobody Likes a Pixelated Squid, is a really cohesive mixture of styles and influences. At times, it has the appearance of someone scrubbing back and forth over segments of video, the movement pausing briefly between the forward and reverse momenta. The two dancers have extraordinary control, their bodies often moving with a careful intimacy, working concurrently to create something genuinely whole rather than separate.

As a festival, NordDance may still be in its infancy, but as the quality of tonight’s programme clearly shows, it is something absolutely worth continuing to build and develop in the future.