Words: Rosie Hall
Image: Viktoria Begg

4 stars

Choreographer and artistic director of Barrowland Ballet, Natasha Gilmore, is a mother of young sons. She cites the book Raising Boys by Steve Biddulph as a key inspiration for Barrowland Ballet’s latest piece. Biddulph emphasises the importance of mentorship for boys as they grow into men. But where do boys and young men seek this mentorship? What does it look like? And what kind of messages do these mentors pass on about what it means to be a man?

And so Wee Man was born, an energetic and visceral dance piece that interrogates the ways masculinity intersects with physicality. The different ways men are intimate with each other: the similarity between clapping each other on the back in friendliness and celebration to thumping each other in anger and violence. The intense physical strain of dance, so often seen as not a ‘macho’ activity, and the way it mirrors ‘manly’ physical sports like football. Indeed, the adult and youth dancers alike are clad in football kits as they swagger, leap and writhe over a floor marked out like a sports pitch, between two goals at either side of the stage. 

Thought-provoking spoken word sections are voiced and projected on screens at the same time; collaborative meditations on manhood, soundtracked by jangly indie rock, thumping drums, infectious fuzzy synths in a bouncing dembow beat. The piece is only marred ever so slightly by a slight lull in the latter half, where the narrative anchors are increasingly few and far between, but it does circle back to a tender and uplifting ending as the main cast are joined by non-professional dancers from the local community.

Wee Man is a timely and lively contribution to the contemporary conversation about masculinity and how its ‘rules’ are learned, shaped and changed.

Wee Man
Assembly @ Dance Base (DB 1)
19:00
8th Aug – 17th Aug