Emergence

Emergence pairs Crystal Pite’s celebrated company work with Entress, a world premiere from choreographer Julia Cheng. Together the programme presents two visions of collective human behaviour, moving between the microscopic and the immense.

Pite’s Emergence, returning to Scottish Ballet for the first time in a decade, draws on swarm intelligence research and the behaviour of bee colonies to cast the full company as a living super-organism. Dancers dissolve individual identity into a breathtaking collective, their movement shifting between insect-like precision and the surging dynamics of a hive mind. Owen Belton’s haunting score underpins the work’s hypnotic world.

Joining it is Entress, a world premiere from Julia Cheng, the acclaimed choreographer behind the West End productions of Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club and Fiddler on the Roof. Cheng brings her distinctive theatrical instinct to the ballet stage, creating a work that speaks to themes of emergence and belonging in a different but complementary register to Pite’s piece.

The double bill tours to Theatre Royal Glasgow, His Majesty’s Theatre Aberdeen, and Festival Theatre Edinburgh in autumn 2026.