Review: Sense of Centre

Edinburgh choreographer and dancer Jack Webb draws heavenly curves and squiggles through the air in this solo dance piece, full of softness and introspection. A Scottish accented voiceover braids together abstract notions of identity, home and belonging, with memories drifting in from Dundee, Dublin, Edinburgh and the Arctic, amongst other places. The narrative begins with specific childhood memories and becomes more suggestive and poetic, with the emphasis more on a growing momentum of emotions than a detailed story arc. Tense white noise builds and swells, with Webb’s long limbs scissoring and wrapping around themselves before the piece eventually reaches a blissed out place of calm. 

Webb begins by placing miniature props on a turntable – tiny plastic hands and model railway trees are filmed live and projected onto a screen behind him. After those close up sequences, everything zooms out and he dances with grace and strength in front of huge projections of deep sea and rolling waves, his body seeming to merge with the water as he undulates and ripples towards the hypnotic final section. As people and places have ebbed and flowed around him, it seems that his body has remained a safe place, something he knows and recognises, and the centre to which he returns.