A highly skilled and thrilling dance showcase that struggles greatly to deliver on its storytelling promises.
After its initial Glasgow showcase in 2022 and its reimagining in 2025, Scottish Street Dance troupe Three60 is now taking “World’s Evolution” on tour. This dance fusion show promises multiple styles of dance as well as a story that follows the journey of humanity. But does it succeed in this mission? It’s a mixed bag.
There is no denying the ability of these performers. From popping, krumping and tutting, to African and Caribbean dance, the technique is off the charts here. This show is stuffed with styles, and the group does a great job at alternating the pace and energy of the show as these styles fluctuate. Performances here are stronger when the group performs as a collective. Earlier sections of the show relied on duets, solos or disconnected sequences, where the group feels more like performers running in and out of scenes as opposed to a collective telling a story together. These sections are still strong, but the final three songs pull together some fantastic footwork and synchronicity that feels like the shows cherry on top. In part this felt like a wonderful finale, but it also, in part, felt like a missing component only realised in the last ten to fifteen minutes.
The show was structured into a series of episodes, krump heavy nearer the beginning and through the middle, but with more variation around the edges. While the arrangement of episodes feels somewhat off, the show still succeeds in delivering eye-catching set pieces. This is done through design elements and embodied choreography that discretely communicated new ideas. One performer adopted a mother earth style costume and other performers adopted large duster / trench coats, indicating individuals shrouded by a dystopian existence. On the other hand, performers at one point danced in a party-like setting with intermittent mimed drinking interspersed throughout, indicating a struggle with alcohol and substances. In general, Three60’s use of costume, small props and choreography, as well as lighting choices, communicated plenty about the themes and ideas of World’s Evolution; technology, desire, female solidarity, loneliness, and more. These were expansive episodes, some more successful than others, the most visceral by far being the sequences covering themes of loneliness and female solidarity.
While these dancers are highly skilled and a thrill to watch, and while certain design elements add some meaning to the dances, much of this structure is decidedly communicated through repetitive royalty free footage, voice samples and visual text. This separates up each dance sequence and is a common practice in Hip-Hop showcases. Unfortunately, these video elements and samples do not add anything to that which the choreography communicates readily on its own. Because of this, images of nuclear bombs and ticking clocks, sporadic text reading “Love”, “War”, “Poverty”, and even a distracting voice line from The Dark Knight Rises, feels rather superfluous.
What “World’s Evolution” promises is a highly technical dance fusion show and a journey through humanity and a story of the world. Indeed, if you are looking for the former, you will be pleased. These performances are highly skilled and choreography does a perfectly good job at communicating its ideas. For the latter, what we instead receive are episodes that embody themes and ideas only. For a dance showcase, this is realistically still quite the accomplishment. But any promised attempt at coherent narrative is unfortunately lost. Perhaps some more focus in the future on using inter-scene video elements in order to lay out a narrative, one which cannot be (and is not already) communicated through the dancers, will help deliver on this promise and ultimately elevate the piece further.