Dancers and birds have a lot in common. Both are capable of extraordinary movements, summoning grace and awkwardness. And both tend to move in flocks, drawing together in solid, symmetrical formations and fracturing into splinter groups, in pairs and trios. All of this is explored in Roser López Espinosa’s soothing, uplifting balm for the eyes, ‘The Flock’. A V-shape of dancers swoop through repeated, syncopated fugues, hypnotising us with their floating arms. Later they flop to the ground, manipulating and lugging one another around the stage in supple, co-operative manoeuvres. There’s joy, curiosity and care in the bonds they make, and their invigorating final flocking captures the way skeins of geese melt in and out of uniformity and irregularity. It’s a beautiful, calming piece. 

Choreographer Sofia Nappi, who created ‘Moving Cloud’, trained with Ohad Naharin, pioneer of the Gaga movement language, and it’s plain to see Gaga’s piquant, ugly or colloquial flash gestures peppered throughout the piece. This is Scottish heritage dancing but not as you know it. The cast wear giant smocks and ruffles and the occasional kilt, lit by Gary Edby’s honey-hued palette. To a wild, ceilidh-dosed score from Celtic group TRIP, they caper, lope and birl, mixing locking and popping ripples into sharp twitching hands and majestic poses. There are glimpses of uncanny bogles, as well as surreal shimmers of Walter Scott’s romantic Highlands. It’s a wonderful and thoroughly contemporary mix of traditional and abstract. 

Scottish Dance Theatre: The Flock/Moving Cloud, Zoo Southside, until 25 August, 6.20pm;; main picture: Brian Hartley.