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<small>[ 12 March 2003, 07:19 AM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>

<B>X Factor</B><BR>BY KELLY APTER in The Scotsman <P><BR>NEVER let it be said that X Factor shy away from difficult subjects. Since forming the contemporary dance company in 1990, artistic director Alan Greig has tackled such hot potatoes as sexual addiction, unexplained deaths, love triangles and destructive relationships.<P>And now with his latest venture, The Dearly Departed , we find ourselves caught up in the complex world of life after death. Where we go, what we do and who we see after falling asleep for the last time is a subject for endless debate, and something which we all hold an opinion on.<P>That is why, rather than setting their choreography solely to music, Greig ventured out with a tape-recorder and gathered countless personal testimonies from ordinary folk willing to share their religious and spiritual beliefs.<P><A HREF="http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/article.html?id=020204004418&query=dance" TARGET=_blank><B>click for more</B></A><BR>

Doing it in their sleep
What happens when we dream? Alan Greig and Christine Devaney take rapid eye movement one step further, discovers MARY BRENNAN for The Herald
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EVERY single one of us dreams, according to Alan Greig. "It's a physical necessity," he says. "As we say in our new show, 'Unless you dream, you die'. It's a proven fact. You've got to have the REM [rapid eye movement] kind of sleep to stay alive. What's also true is that some people have very vivid dreams they then remember; other people forget their dreams and then believe they don't dream. They do. Everyone dreams every night."

For this show, In Your Dreams, Greig has recruited the leading Scottish dancer, Christine Devaney. "Somebody asked me if the dreams are very personal. The answer's no. Christine and I both keep dream journals.

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X Factor Dance - In Your Dreams
By Kelly Apter for The Scotsman
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X FACTOR has a talent for covering things from all angles. Last year they took a surgeon’s knife to death, dissecting our every thought and feeling. And now they’ve entered the bizarre land of dreams. Like sleep itself, In Your Dreams has peaks and troughs; moments when we’re so absorbed nothing could shake us, followed by sections when the slightest distraction gets our attention.

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<small>[ 12 March 2003, 02:49 AM: Message edited by: Stuart Sweeney ]</small>

X-Factor Dance
By Ellie Carr for The Sunday Herald

Still on the sampling tip, Edinburgh-based X-Factor's latest full-length work takes the voices of experts and ordinary people discussing dream experiences and winds them into a soundtrack that drives a sometimes thought-provoking piece of dance.

This is a familiar format for X-Factor's director Alan Greig. And it's one that has worked well for him in the past, seizing as he does upon meaty subjects (from gay cruising to infidelity and death) and using the resulting interviews and audio clips as both basis for a soundscape and springboard for choreographic motifs.

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