Emergence / Entress

There is something almost miraculous about the way Crystal Pite makes an ensemble seem like one breathing thing. Emergence is strange, beautiful and exhilarating, with bodies, sound and material continually changing state around one another.

Scottish Ballet’s double bill pairs Pite’s Emergence with Julia Cheng’s Entress. Entress opens with floating sheets, black and dramatic against a sloping stage, as a lone performer sweeps across the space looking upwards. Bodies emerge beneath soft, hazy pink light, crouched like rocks, then pulse together and apart, crawling towards one another. Isobel Waller-Bridge’s score moves between soft piano and strings and cascading industrial rhythms, while Beibei Wang’s percussion drives the tension. There is something liquid in the movement as dancers congeal and flow like waves, while Kayla-Maree Tarantolo searches for something lost.

Yann Seabra’s design is sublime. Black fabric hangs above the stage like a cloud, drifting and reactive before descending around Tarantolo and becoming a prison. Rishan Benjamin appears behind her in an eerie Pepper’s Ghost, following where she cannot see him, before emerging fully into the space as her captor. Their duet is dark, haunting and bittersweet. Benjamin, gowned and winged, wraps himself around Tarantolo as the cello wraps around a sweeping violin from the pit.

After the interval, Emergence begins with a broken body struggling to stand before a man helps her up. Pite sets the women against a machine-like male legion, then steadily erodes the distinction. The ballerinas begin scrambling on pointe like centipedes, while the men march with mechanical regularity. The stage feels like a field at dawn, light creeping through the tunnel as shadows explode into foliage. The insect-like ballerinas gradually synchronise with the men until there is nothing left to tell them apart.

Pite builds this transformation through rhythm and repetition. What begins as separate bodies becomes a single organism, and the result is exhilarating.

Emergence / Entress by Scottish Ballet. Credit Scottish Ballet.