Belgian choreographer Wim Vandekeybus's latest piece works over a female cast like a beast, beating their bodies until blood is spilled. Soaked in an outpouring of furious story-telling, the women - five dancers and two actresses who dance well - blasted through a dark visceral view of life and death and birth and back again. One and a half hours fly by - this is a little miracle of modern dance.
The show was part of Glasgow's New Territories season, the umbrella title for the newly amalgamated festivals New Moves International and National Review of Live Art. Vandekeybus's company, Ultima Vez, returned to the city for the first time in 14 years. His work is serious and dense. Images pour from the stage, using words, dance, sound and music in a sampling technique that blends all four and remoulds them as one. Bodies become sound. A surreal, silver-painted hand, released from its red-lined box, growls like a big cat as it drags the woman at the end of it round the stage. Fleshy noises turn into breathy sounds. Knapsacks full of dirt are tipped over heads; more bags of dirt are vomited and danced over with bleak northern- European expression. The earth-to-earth message is a well-worn one, from the Bible to Flanders' Fields, but Vandekeybus and his company manage to make it fresh with their physical urgency.
The set is spare and made for the Tramway with its worn-brick warehouse interior. Six wooden panels to the rear create shelters; the dancers disappear and move among them like magic tricks. After a gentle introduction, with one woman, then two, then three, then seven looking out to the audience, heads bowed, the piece speeds up and enters a twilight zone.
The performers change their clothes a lot, wrap around each other, power-kick, make lampshades with membrane that slaps from the gods to the floor. They are reborn and dance as if their lives depend on it. Vandekeybus carefully directs every detail, layering references but never overloading, moving on with gunfire timing but always allowing the audience time to catch up. The piece is tough but not relentless.
Performances are flawless; elfin Scottish dancer Iona Kewney adds local interest and scurries maniacally with astonishingly supple force. The seven dance with their guts - limbs seem extraneous. Their accented voices texture a soundtrack by Eavesdropper and Josh Martin with breath and poetry by Flemish writer Peter Verhelst. They talk of dreams - when you go home, you dream on.
