Warmth and a lot of heart. Scottish Dance Theatre 40th Anniversary Gala

Dundee Rep
October 31, 2026

“A star that continues to shine. Across the city, across the country and internationally.” That was how long-time Dundee City councillor Lynne Short, noted for her tireless support for the city and its people, described Scottish Dance Theatre in an entertaining speech ahead of the company’s 40th Anniversary Gala. Who could argue?

Anniversary galas are commonplace in the classical ballet world. Contemporary dance companies have largely avoided them, opting for a new work or mixed programme instead. Sometimes, they are barely marked at all. While this special evening at the Dundee Rep didn’t include any pieces from way back in the company’s history, it still managed to look both back and forward. It also included something very unique: 40 by 40, a one-off improvised piece featuring forty past and present dancers.

But the dance got underway with O Chiadain An Lo by Joan Clévillé, artistic director since 2019. A duet, it featured Ben McEwan and Kassichana Okene-Jameson, both in black jackets and trousers over light-coloured shirts. It’s a dance of great depth, about memory, ancestry and hidden truths. All are evoked by the choreography, the black, misty stage, and the wonderfully atmospheric music of smallpipes player Brighde Chaimbeul. The various artistic contributions all coming together to make it feel like we had been transported to some mystical place in the deserted, boggy place deep in the Highlands.

McEwan and Okene-Jameson initially moved with a lovely languid gracefulness. Later, when the dance is more dynamic, driven it seems by the music, their outstanding intensity and control remained. Simultaneously contemporary and traditional, of the now and of the past, it felt so very Scottish; so very Scottish Dance Theatre.

The evening’s gala was just the culmination of a year of celebratory events. Highlights have included the Scottish Roots triple bill, from which O Chiadain An Lo came, a new double-bill of works by Édouard Hue and Emilie Leriche, and the Memory in Motion project, for which Queen Margaret University researcher Dr. Andy Henry has been digging into archive boxes to document the company’s four decades. As part of that project, a book will be available shortly.

As part of Memory in Motion, local dancers of all ages joined with choreographer Bridie Gain to create RECollect. In the specially reworked excerpt shown, the dancers clearly relished their moment in the spotlight as they used costumes from past works to bring history alive. The live choreography was also backed by images from those pieces, the connections clearly visible.

The evening felt very much one of old friends coming together. Former artistic directors Neville Campbell, Janet Smith and Fleur Darkin were all present, although founder Royston Muldoon was unable to travel from Berlin, where he now lives, and Tamara McLorg was busy elsewhere with choreography and performance.

Among the returning artists was Matthew William Robertson, formerly a dancer, choreographer and rehearsal director with the company, now artistic director of ŻfinMalta – National Dance Company, the repertory national company of the Mediterranean island. Dancers Andrea Biagioni, Pearl Calleja and Mario Manara presented an excerpt from Robinson’s The Bull, The Princess and the Hero, a work inspired by the myth of Theseus and the Labyrinth.

There was no doubting the quality of the dancers. The choreography has a wonderful physical rigour, the highlight a very powerful, very strong solo by Calleja. But while there was clearly conceptual depth too, any connection with the myth was not obviously apparent. I suspect it works better in its full version, complete with set that provides a visual backdrop of a sand sculpture that pictures suggest evokes a transitory landscape and the maze.

Bringing everyone right up to date, it was a few minutes from the company’s most recent creation, Emilie Leriche’s Rotten Work that took everyone to the interval. Having seen it in full the previous evening, the whole piece is a bit of a slow burner that takes time for thoughts to percolate. This excerpt just convinced me even more that I need to see it in full again.

With everyone suitably refreshed, the second half opening with an few minutes from not for glory by bagpiper and composer Malin Lewis, Irish dancer Jack Anderson, and former Scottish Dance Theatre Youth Dance Company member, Charlotte Mclean. It’s anarchic. A sort of disco rave meets Scottish and Irish folk, heavy bass meets bagpipes. It’s restless, a little bit freestyle and slightly wild. It’s everything that folk dance is, and everything that it isn’t. It’s also utterly brilliant.

40 by 40 could hardly have been any more different. The cast featured people from Scottish Dance Theatre’s earliest days to recent joiners. Many hadn’t met before that very afternoon. Many hadn’t danced on stage for years. You would barely have guessed.

It proved a piece of quiet warmth. There was so much going on, so many dancers, so many little moments, that the eye didn’t quite know where to look. But it was also quite beautiful in its way. Wherever one looked, the movement had a lovely quality; quite languid at times, although some parts involving the younger dancers were quite dynamic. The misty atmosphere gave it an ethereal, looking back in time feel. At one point, most of the older dancers melted into the background, some standing, some sitting on chairs. As they watched largely the current performers, they almost felt like kindly ghosts from the past, albeit, of course, very much in the present.

Ballet galas usually round off with one of the old classical firework pas de deux. Don Quixote, more often than not. Of course, Scottish Dance Theatre don’t have that. But they do have Sofia Nappi’s Moving Cloud.

Nappi is much in demand these days for her unique style, one where dance can be quite raw but where movement and emotion are inseparable. The excerpt from Moving Cloud danced encapsulated the whole piece which, from an almost mystical opening, develops into one of the most utterly joyous contemporary dance works I know. To a coming together of Scottish folk music by Donald Shaw and Glasgow-band TRIP, the dancers swoop across the space, their baggy shirts and kit-like skirts billowing. They were clearly enjoying it as much as those watching. It was a wonderful end to a wonderful evening.

Except that it wasn’t quite the end because the theatre was then given over to a dance party that went on into the small hours with Dominic Venditozzi, better know as Lux Lucis DJ, a seasoned underground DJ and key figure in Dundee’s alternative arts scene for over thirty years.

As host for the evening, Pauline McLean, BBC Scotland arts correspondent, observed, who would have guessed that from its small beginnings as Dundee Rep Dance Company, with just four dancers, Scottish Dance Theatre would be where it is today? In dance’s Premiership, internationally respected and very much a cultural ambassador for the city and for Scotland. And yet also a company that hasn’t forgotten its roots. A company where being in and of the community remains an important part of what it is.

Memory in Motion: 40 Years of Scottish Dance Theatre is available to order here.