things to make you go hmmm

Well known for its sense of adventure and fun, Scottish Dance Theatre has drafted in a pair of maverick guest choreographers. They're out for revenge, finds Ellie Carr, but on who or what? Filing down the narrow steps of Scottish Dance Theatre's cramped studio space to watch rehearsals for their Autumn Tour premiere, Revenge Of the Impossible Things - I feel I've stepped into a strange, shape- shifting world where anything can happen.

The work's creators are Tom Roden and Pete Shenton, joint artistic directors of New Art Club (formerly Air Dance Company). They are lobbing one-liners around the room like ping-pong balls - which, incidentally, have featured heavily in their oeuvre.

"That lift is looking really good," deadpans Roden to a pair of dancers in mid-flight. "If we want it to look really boring."

I spend a short time watching this quirky new commission for Scotland's leading contemporary ensemble unfold. But during that time there are lengthy discussions about whether Shenton should take a vital Rubik's Cube prop to Philadelphia to prevent idle hands from tinkering with the stickers and whether or not a bunny-hop step (which I found comical in the extreme) is crucial to the "plot".

Ask what the plot entails (who are the Impossible Things and why must they have their revenge?) - and you get an answer as surreal as the seemingly random fragments of text and movement buzzing around the room.

"The Impossible Things are the thoughts we're scared of having," says Roden. "The thoughts that we have and that we suppress before they become ideas. This piece is about having those thoughts - really having them. It's about going into our imaginations in a totally self- conscious way.

"The title - the word 'revenge' - makes it into an event. It makes it sound like a B-movie I suppose. It suggests an event which, of course, is what a theatre piece is. And it suggests a kind of energy. Revenge is all about pain and power - it's exciting and it's mean."

And says Roden, impish grin barely concealed behind the chicken sandwich he is eating for lunch: "Revenge Of The Impossible Things is funny - it's just stupid."

Tom and Pete are the Vic and Bob of the dance world - a terpsichorean double-act whose work spills over into territory not normally trodden by the Lycra-clad. Their work is frequently described as "dance meets stand-up comedy": they have even taken the piss out of their own art-form in This Is Modern, a hilarious pastiche of the tights-wearing mores of modern dance (seen recently at the Edinburgh Fringe).

Scottish Dance Theatre's artistic director Janet Smith was one of those caught by the blend of capricious humour and inventiveness in Roden and Shenton's early works. Around two years ago, recalls Roden, she invited the duo to spend a week "playing with the company to see if they liked us and we liked them - we had a right old time". The result was a commission to make Revenge.

The eight-strong troupe has recently regrouped, after the loss of four dancers including stars Errol White and Davina Givan. It has grown increasingly eloquent in handling repertoire ranging from the rich, abstract theatrics of Jan de Schynkel's Daddy I'm Not Well to Smith's own witty take on Scottish-isms, High Land. But Roden and Shenton's off-beam approach was to throw up fresh challenges.

When first asked to deliver the lines and gags that typify New Art Club's work, the choreographers found their cast strangely mute. But, says Roden, the perception that dancers can't do "theatre" is a common one. "Somewhere along the line someone said, 'dancers can't act' and it became fact," he says. "But it's bullshit. There isn't the same thing that actors can't dance. Acting is seen as this sacred art. But in reality, we all do it all the time."

As for the jokes, he says: "There's a great history of comedy in dance - and a great history of dance in comedy. Morecambe and Wise's gags were visual as much as text gags. And they actually did loads of choreographic gags."

And if the laughs are there, so too is a growing sense of pathos that renders the dance-cum-stand-up descriptions inadequate.

"Our shows are funny but they also have a dark edge," says Roden. "This Is Modern is desperate. My character [in This Is Modern] questions his role in the work so much that he does a dance where he becomes drenched in this passionate, angry solo - he's kind of sweaty and rolling around on the floor in anger and pain and loneliness. We really try and go there. There are no laughs in that."

And while the characters and the precise roles of those slippery little Impossible Things are still forming, Roden is 100% clear about where the work is headed: "I really want to take the audience to a place with this piece. I want them to understand that the message is one of honesty and beauty and love."

And just when you think he's about to declare that God is love, he adds a postscript: "I really want to get that message across - and then I want to pull the rug from underneath it."

But, he says: "I don't want to do it only so I can pull the rug. I really, really want this to be about my feelings about the world so we can go, isn't it funny? - and at the same time sad and beautiful. And I think that's what great theatre is. A cheap laugh is no good."

Scottish Dance Theatre's Autumn Tour begins at Dundee Rep on September 19. (The bill that evening includes Revenge Of The Impossible Things and Inside Somewhere). It tours the UK until December 20 www.scottishdancetheatre.com

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