When Wee Home first appeared, it brought together three artists who could rightly be regarded as national treasures. Apart from McConnell, director Gerry Mulgrew has a reputation as one of Scotland’s most forward thinking performers. Through his own company Communicado, he continues to develop an imaginative and politically astute theatre, most recently in his version of The Government Inspector. Making up the trinity, is singer songwriter Michael Marra, who has justly been called a Scottish Tom Waits.

While both subject matter and creators are undeniably Scottish, McConnell says that he likes “to think of the piece as equally part of a European dance theatre tradition.” Certainly, he mentions influences from across the continent, alongside Scottish names. “Maybe I  didn’t realise it at the time but Royston Maldoom has always been an influential figure. And in the past year I was devastated by the death of Pina Bausch,” he admits. This acknowledge of both European and local inspiration is, however, distinctive of the Scottish artists of the past twenty years. Amongst other opportunities, the year as City of Culture in 1990, and the programming of Tramway, has encouraged Caledonian performers to look to the east.

Wee Home tells the story, through song and dance, of a man returning to Glasgow after a period away, and reflects on the myths and shared stories that make up the city. Gerry Mulgrew remembers that these stories connected him and McConnell more than he had expected. “When we first devised the piece together in the eighties, Frank and I realised we had both been brought up in Partick within yards of each other and it was the memory of those city streets, of the bustle of Dumbarton Road, which formed the genesis of  the story.” Perhaps this joint history makes Wee Home so deft in its analysis of Glasgow, although the arrival of Marra seemed to be a slight distraction.

“Mick being a Dundonian,” Mulgrew laughs.  “We had to teach him certain Glasgow moves to make him an honorary Weegie: but the boy learns fast!” Indeed, so fast did Marra pick them up, his song Mother Glasgow has become something of an alternative anthem for the city. Yet despite its West Coast flavor, Mulgrew insists that the work is not parochial.

“In essence it is a universal, timeless piece about returning to the place of your childhood, a subject for art which crosses all boundaries.” As for the gap between the original production and its revival, Mulgrew is unconcerned. “Twenty-one years  is a quite miniscule period of time in terms of human history.”  More specifically, in the year of Homecoming, it is perhaps a necessary antidote to some of the more gruesome heritage aspects of Scotland The Brand.”

Mulgrew’s attitude is, in itself, expressive of that great Glaswegian virtue: gallusness, or an almost reckless swagger that translates into a fearless self-confidence. While Wee Home may have more than a few distinctive Glaswegian episodes -  the memories of school and the particular religious upbringing are uniquely West Coast – it resonates with a universal energy that is recognisable to any traveller returning back to an unwelcoming homecoming.

Scottish Dance Theatre are the biggest name on the programme: through their presence at the Fringe every year, and a relentless touring programme, the Dundee dancers have blazed a trail for contemporary dance. Led by artistic director Janet Smith, their mission seems to be to bring contemporary work to a wider public. Double bill The Life and Times of Girl A and NQR  is a typical combination of serious content – NQR stands for Not Quite Right, a medical term for those who don’t fit preconceived ideas of normality – and accessible choreography. 

Janis Claxton’s work is surprisingly playful: over the past few years, she has been concentrating on the idea of the human as an animal: for the Fringe 2008, this involved capturing dancers in Enclosure 44 of Edinburgh Zoo, while Torque set animal gestures to the score of Bach’s Partita #2.  Having recently toured China with an iteration of Human Animal – like Enclosure 44 it is a durational and site-responsive piece – she has moved from being one of Scotland’s rising stars to a strong international export.

Both Curious Seed and Room 2 Manoeuvre debuted their current shows at Dance Base in 2009: Curious Seed’s Found won a Herald Angel, while Tony Mill’s warning about the dangers of television has been touring consistently for the past eighteen months. While Mill’s Watch It! is a solo, Found is a fascinating collaboration between choreographer Christine Devaney and  musician/author Luke Sutherland. With live music, passages of speech alongside the dance, it represents a fine example of “dance theatre”, moving beyond the expected patterns of dance into a more immediate and direct style of performance.

PlanB’s revival of A Wee Home From Home proves how a work can retain its relevance, and popularity, even after twenty years. Another example of “dance theatre”, it works as a duet between dancer Frank McConnell and musician Michael Marra. Dealing with alienation and the problems of coming home to “Mother Glasgow”, it retains a certain poignancy, even though its vision of Scottishness belongs to an earlier era.  Directed by Communicado’s Gerry Mulgrew, it brings together  something of a performance supergroup and is recommended for its easy fusion of Marra’s stripped down melancholy and McConnell’s hyperkinetic movement.