MC14/22 (Ceci Est Mon Corps)/Emergence

Scottish Ballet

Festival Theatre (run ended)

FOR its Edinburgh International Festival showcase, Scottish Ballet served up an austere double bill offering as much for the intellect as the senses. It came courtesy of French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj's challenging exploration of The Last Supper and the lives of the Apostles, and Canadian Crystal Pite's only slightly less chewy piece, inspired by a concept of insect behaviour known as “swarm intelligence”.

The first work, also known as MC Quatorze, functions as a hymn to the corporeal and the spiritual as 12 sweat-slicked male dancers, performing mostly in pairs, work through a punishing series of formations. Tenderness, homo-eroticism, violence, torture, it's all here: at one point soloist Andrew Peasgood is gradually (and brutally) immobilised using the kidnapper's favourite stationary item – parcel tape – and Constant Vigier proves himself a pretty decent counter-tenor as he battles through a plainsong chant as fists are shoved in his mouth to muffle him. Meanwhile the steel desks which started out as catacombs later become autopsy slabs and then a long dining table for a tableau representing the Last Supper, though with the dancers striking poses that nod to Greek sculpture as much as Christian iconography. The soundtrack, on-off bursts of glitchy dissonance and white noise, add to the power of the performance.

From that fierce 55-minute opening salvo, the intensity level drops a little with Emergence. By the end, all of the company's 37-strong corps will be swarming in formation, though the piece starts with a jerky duet evoking something spiky, angular and locust-like. Pite sees the dance stage as comparable with the insect nest so when the chirrups and clicks on the soundtrack give way to moody instrumentation, we watch the ballerinas goose-stepping en pointe or mimicking bar work as they count one through 11. As with MC14, it's all perfectly executed.

Not an obvious choice for an EIF programme, perhaps, but a pleasingly radical one from a company keen to show its eclectic side.