Wolf Pack Review: A Decade of Barrowland Ballet’s Scottish Dance

It feels slightly strange to review Wolf Pack in the same way I would review most productions within contemporary Scottish dance. As a dancer and choreographer myself, I am used to bringing certain expectations into the theatre about what makes a performance ‘good’. But watching Wolf Pack, many of those usual criteria gradually seem to dissolve.

Celebrating ten years of Barrowland Ballet’s intergenerational company, the evening at Edinburgh’s The Studio brings together three live works—Like Blood, See Me, and HA HA HA—alongside the dance films Wolf and And I’ll Huff. The company’s membership ranges from seven to 80; a remarkable 73-year age span bringing a wide range of bodies, experiences, and understandings of movement onto the same stage.

Led by Artistic Director Natasha Gilmore, Wolf Pack operates as a free, non-audition company. This removes any fixed idea of who can be a dancer, or what a dancing body should look like. That absence of judgement creates a particular kind of freedom.

The three live works share a recognisable creative language. Members’ voices become part of the soundtracks, responding personally to the ideas behind each piece. In Like Blood, you hear different generations describing what blood means or feels like to them; in See Me, personal testimony turns towards the experience of being judged before being properly seen.

A Shared Creative Language

These voices make the people behind the movement more present. Visually, each piece has its own character, from the deep reds of Like Blood to the cooler whites and blues of HA HA HA. Rhythm becomes a particularly clever way of bringing this varied company together.

Repeated pulses in Like Blood give everyone a shared beat, making the connection to the human heartbeat almost literal, while individual movement and improvisation allow each person to remain distinct. The material feels shaped around the performers rather than imposed onto them.

**Production images for *Ha Ha Ha* (Studio Snap)**

Gilmore states that the staging is explicitly collaborative. ‘Wolf Pack brings together the creativity and expressiveness of the intergenerational cast, giving them a voice,’ she said, noting that members contribute directly to the themes, choreography, and text. The evening at The Studio follows recent summer appearances at both the Merchant City Festival and Gathered Together, Scotland’s inclusive dance festival in Glasgow.

Theatrical Play and Filmic Counterparts

HA HA HA brings in more theatrical play. One group laughs with exaggerated joy, another collapses into sadness, while a third watches almost indifferently. Three of the youngest members also appear together in movement that is extremely simple but somehow needs nothing more.

Their openness carries its own strength. I caught the eye of one of the youngest girls, and she smiled at me. It was a tiny exchange, but one that quietly moved me.

The two films open another window onto Wolf Pack. Created in 2017, Wolf places the company in a woodland and turns them into something close to a real pack. Older members lead, younger ones find their own paths, while a young girl becomes a recurring presence through the film. Bodies hide, gather, and dart between the trees with an alert, almost animal sensitivity.

The cinematography moves beautifully between wide shots of the group disappearing into the landscape, and close details of watchfulness and reaction, making this physical diversity feel completely at home within the same world. The production company notes that both Wolf and its companion piece have subsequently gathered laurels from international circuits, including the San Francisco Arthouse Short Festival and Aesthetica.

Their openness carries its own strength. I caught the eye of one of the youngest girls, and she smiled at me. It was a tiny exchange, but one that quietly moved me.

And I’ll Huff, made during the pandemic and taking The Three Little Pigs as a starting point, moves somewhere far more enclosed. In an abandoned-looking industrial space, the performers build a temporary shelter from bales of hay. It carries a quiet longing to reconnect—to come close and feel another person’s warmth again.

Growing Alongside One Another

Seen together, the films also make Wolf Pack’s ten-year history visible. Tracing its roots to the 2016 Tramway project Wolves, the company was previously guided by dance artist Aya Kobayashi alongside a wider cast. Now, operating from a newly surfaced studio floor in the reopened Citizen’s Theatre, the group claims to function like an extended family—even boasting three actual family units within its ranks.

Between the works, company member Isaac Convey serves as an informal host, sharing why he joined the group and what it means to him. In the earlier footage, he is still a young boy; now he stands before us as a teenager, and a striking performer in his own right. His growth makes the company’s impact suddenly tangible. People are not simply making work together, but growing alongside one another over time.

That, perhaps, is what stays with me most about Wolf Pack. Dance becomes less about proving what a body can do, and more about what can happen between people when judgement is taken away. The freedom is not only in how they move, but in how openly they are allowed to be themselves.

Featured Image: Production images for Ha Ha Ha (Studio Snap)