MOVE at warp speed in Celtic Connections

The lights dim. Sharp light picks out a single piper – and the bagpipes sing as few of us have heard them sing. The place stills. As the pipes soar, other fragments of sound come from the darkness on the other side of the stage – stray yelps from a saxophone, chords, challenging the fluency and sweetness of the pipes and adding a strange  dramatic counterpoint.

The mood for the event was set.

Chris Coates, a young piper from Lochgilphead now playing with the Lomond and Clyde Pipe Band, can make this instrument perform in a way that is mesmeric – and he was one of many fabulously talented musicians on stage. Fraser Fifield on the saxophone, guitar virtuoso John Goldie, Travis drummer Neil Primrose, a team of pipers, drummers and a young vocalist all from Argyll – and Musical Director, John Saich, a former member of Scots Gaelic band, Capercaille, now director of Wild Biscuit, from Argyll, which produced the show.

Saich (above, in the shadows, with the vocalist) has done the musical arrangement which, as signalled by the stunning opening piece, is full of invention and surprise. He plays bass and, clearly with a picture-perfect grasp of every footfall and note in this complex and fast-paced show, he keeps it on track from a discreet  strategic position, right of the drums.

With the musicians are the members of Random Aspekts, a breakdance crew who perform together, in small groups and with the tenor drummers who could be described as MOVE’s inhouse dance team, with Edinburgh based choreographer Tony Mills.

MOVE’s pipers and drummers are, in a fusion show, wearing fusion dress. It looks like traditional Scottish dress, with kilts of a sort – but these have white, seamed-edged panels making the team a compellingly mysterious cross between cyber warriors and familiar members of a pipe band.

In this show, everything is familiar – but estranged; what you think you know is taken from you, changed and given back – with new allegiances and confidence.

You have to trust your own responses to connect with what you’re seeing – and if you do, you suddenly realise that the breakdancers are skilfully paying tribute to ballet and then joyfully taking ownership of highland dancing – in both cases a fusion of dance forms that is quite breathtaking and wonderfully fluidly performed.

These guys are almost never off the stage and almost never still, with energy galvanisung their bodies, airborne, floorborne.  They love to dance, they want to dance, they probably insist on dancing all the time. You can’t imagine them ever being immobile. Making a meal at home can hardly be a mundane event.  Their feet are irresistible, endlessly pouncing,  quick, light, barely touching the floor and somehow like white pom-poms. The feet are a show all of their own.

They perform everything they dance – it’s full of narrative, discussion, debate, challenge, cheek. Absolutely glorious and enviably celebrating being alive. This makes you begin to contemplate reincarnation and doing it differently next time.

The faces of the entire ensemble – the musicians, the haunting Gaelic singer, the breakdancers – are all enlivened and all actively enjoying each other’s performance skills. Smiles break out in internal appreciation.

The tenor drummers – arguably the most performative drum -  dance and drum. The pipers let their sound command the stage while staying physically at the side – very well judged direction.The professional musicians weave their magic modestly, never seeking the limelight and blending seamlessly with their colleagues from the other disciplines.

This show could not be better named, MOVE, with an hour long set that never stops, just keeps morphing into something else – much of it beyond anticipation. It celebrates extraordinary skills with a throwaway ease that belies the absolute professionalism at the heart of the event.

There were nine new compositions in the show, all written by members of the core team. One – a combination of two piece, by tenor drummer, Sally Hall – Fraser’s Flight and Ace of Clubs – commemorates a heart stopping sequence of events that took place not long before Christmas 2011. Their newly born grandson, Fraser, had to be airlifted form Lorn and the isles General Hospital in Oban to Glasgow, in a helicopter whose crews’  nickname for it is  Ace of Clubs.

And the set ended with the MOVE take on Scotland the Brave.

This show is hugely exciting, amusing, life enhancing – and it has been made in Argyll. If you get a chance to see it, thank your lucky stars.

Note: This show was produced by Wild Biscuit for the 2012 Celtic Connections Festival, with a programme running until Sunday 5th February.