Dance at the 2007 Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Michael Scott reports


The Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the world’s largest arts festival, gets bigger every year. There are 88 listings in just the dance and physical theatre section of this year’s programme. It’s no small task picking out all the hot tickets, but help is provided in the busy streets of Scotland ’s capital city. Alongside the many buskers, performers hand out countless flyers, some even dance a step or two. There are hand-standing Korean breakdancers and Native American rain dancers − dancing with much success this summer! A group of contact improvisational dancers led by Merav Israel hold the attention of passers-by as they perform a 12-hour continuous duet with multiple participants in a shop window studio space.

There’s always the chance − and worry! − of audience participation at a Fringe show. Last year, it was none other than Kylie Minogue who jumped on stage with Havana Rumba. Back again, the Cubans are in party mode as they take a fast paced spin through a history of Afro-Cuban rumba styles − including newly created rumba in kilts for bare-chested boys! Always playful, with a hot Latin onstage band, the presentation is theatrical, colourful and well staged, with exciting choreography and sexy dance routines.

Some of the very best audience participation is to be seen in Break Out, a great street-dance family show from Korea with endearing comic book story and characters and slapstick humour. With too many plot ideas at the beginning, Break Out keeps you laughing even when the story is lost in the middle, and by the end you’re just enjoying the sheer brilliance of the dancing and beat-boxing. There’s plenty more b-boy action from Korea at this year’s Fringe. South Korea is well known for its award winning breakdancers and Maximum Crew’s b-boys are first class. Whether it’s tumbling, breaking, balancing on heads or spinning on hands, Maximum Crew delivers break dancing that is frighteningly good. They’re a charming outfit but often the charm, especially when it comes to some lightweight disco numbers, pushes aside the real talent. Also from Korea , The Ballerina who loves a B-boy is a joyful show packing audiences into a cramped backroom of a hotel. Even the slimmest of story lines and the need for better direction isn’t enough to deter the fantastic b-boys or the delighted and wildly enthusiastic crowd. The ballet girls display strong leg work but lack both point shoes and the virtuosity necessary to compete with the boys in a dance off. The brilliance of the show is in the break dancing complimented by the ensemble hip-hop and some super popping and locking. Spin Odyssey has a simple storyline based loosely on Homer’s epic. It’s very funny and packed with excellent breaking from Korean b-boy crew Last For One with some nice double work. British hip-hop company Zoo Nation are back at the Fringe with Into the Hoods again, this time in a bigger venue. Skilfully child friendly, Into the Hoods has pantomime characters, video backdrops, and gritty street passion in the mix, and remains a treat for all the family.

There’s more street culture at Dance Base, the only Fringe venue dedicated solely to dance. After their success at last year’s Fringe, Random Aspekts’ breakdancing veterans Peter Maniam and Matt Foster champion a crew of teenage protégés in HipHopScotch, a beatboxing, DJing, and bagpiping mix of Scottish and hip-hop culture. It’s in the energetic but unfortunately short finale that the fusion really comes alive. And it’s in these few minutes that the young break dancers get to show they’re b-boy stars in the making.

Dance Base packs plenty more dance action into four mixed bill programmes. Company Seo presents Somewhere Else, a duet by Korean choreographer Misook Seo performed beautifully by contemporary dancer Jukyong Kang and French ballet dancer Vanessa Caihol. Seo’s contemplative duet is charming but where it suggests conflict it is lacking in bite and purpose. Based in Scotland , Priya Shrikumar delivers two solo Indian dances in traditional dress, Devi and Thillana, with authority, strength and poise, let down only by some unsympathetic lighting changes. American Stephen Pelton’s A Hundred Miles is a theatrical lamentation as he assumes the persona of a female protagonist from the classic folk songbook. To an appropriate American folk songscape accompaniment, Pelton in red wig and green dress caresses a tree stump as he describes a gender questioning ending of innocence leading to the hint of suicide. Danish choreographer Kitt Johnson appears back to the audience like an embryonic grotesque, an emerging alien creature, every muscle of her exposed upper body with a life of its own. Johnson’s interest is in the emerging of primordial life as she creates a strobe effect with vibrating body tremors − giving the audience a sense of motion sickness! Johnson’s solo is only an excerpt from Rankefod − which means a barnacle type of marine crustacean, by the way. The full 55 minutes is much anticipated.

Martial Dance’s ActionReaction has projected video on movable flexible screens on which dancers climb and impress body shapes. The concept is too ambitious for the tight surroundings while the music gets more hot and steamy than the choreography. Shamita Ray brings together contemporary dance and South Indian classical dance in Dark Matter to create a multi-cultural and well-crafted solo inspired by the observation that so much of the universe is known about yet not understood. The tenacity of Ross Cooper’s Curve Foundation Dance Company has paid off spectacularly with the staging of William Forsyth’s Duo danced by Maud Liardon and Soraya Ham. Duo demands total unison from the two performers as they cue one another with the exhalation of breath, their moves prompting musician Thom Willems, improvising at the piano. Indisputably a Dance Base highlight and enthusiastically presented, although unfortunately not to best effect in the limited conditions of the studio theatre.

Colette Sadler’s extract from dDumY portrays an introverted loner. In silence and remaining faceless, she struggles with a chair, pushing it across a vast table covering half the stage area. With dead-pan delivery, the two performers of Denmark ’s Club Fisk begin Forestillinger with white board and marker pens to describe their routine which they then proceed to perform with exaggerated movement and contorted faces, repeating the process as whip-lashing exotic dancers and again as giant teddy bears. The choreographer, Kasper Daugaard Pousen, possibly fails to come to any substantial conclusions about the raised questions of expectations. However, amidst raucous laughter and with tears streaming down faces, we are perhaps just content with the fun of it all. Eeva Muilu from Finland is a dancer of note. Fellow performers have to feel for her character Amanda in her solo Vermiculus as she bares herself, stripping to mismatched underwear, standing in for another dancer who has cancelled due to sadness, irritability and tension. Amanda on the other hand is highly charged as she literally bounces off and around the stage, grinning and flirting throughout a disco number before sitting to describe her unfulfilled ambitions to produce dance routines with up to 35 performers, repeating the words of critics, “Not enough! More, more, more!” to the point that she collapses deflated to the floor. At which point, we are informed that the original performer has returned and Amanda is free to leave. In anguished silence, she slows down into a series of poses, producing a musical clockwork toy that starts up at her command. Hers is an automated ending to a lively beginning − dance producers and critics take note.

Perhaps Dance Base’s most commendable programme features brothers Jacob and Tom, aged 14 and 12, in 13. They don’t live in a hip world of teenage culture and this is captured by their mother, choreographer Beth Cassani. The boy’s delivery is remarkably impressive, especially as they’re new to the limelight. Despite a mother’s intimacy, 13 reveals much about every young boy’s preparation for adulthood. Suddenly Last Winter is a ‘He Ain’t Heavy’ study of middle age and male dependence, danced with total conviction by Andrew Giday and Ryan Boorne and tenderly set to Jesus Blood by Gavin Bryars. Muscular Memory Lane, an eloquent duet, part personal study, danced by Diana Payne-Myers (going on 80) and Matthew Hawkins (30 years her junior), is a heart-warming journey of reflection, celebration of the present, and belief in the future.

Aura Nova as usual presents a wealth of quality international physical theatre with a few dance gems. As a poetic triumph of voice and movement, Victoria only just misses the mark while definitely a dance highlight of the Fringe. Dulcinea Langfelder as Victoria is a hospital-bound pensioner looked after by a frustrated male nurse. She duets with her wheelchair, is limply carried about by the orderly, and tap dances in his shoes. Shadows and projections on partition curtains that cut and change scenes captivate the attention as does a wheelchair seemingly dancing on its own. Victoria is intelligent, moving, and funny. Whether or not there’s any choreographic merit in Incarnat, it’s the copious amount of tomato sauce squirted, poured, spat, vomited, and rolled in by the naked dancers of Brazilian Lia Rodrigues Companhia de Dancas that remains in the memory. There’s a serious message, though, and a fury in what choreographer Rodrigues calls a plea for involvement and commitment. Cabaret Decay Unlimited provides an unexpected dance highlight of the Fringe in Jofre Carabén’s delightful elastic-body capers, and a body bag dance!

There’s lots more dance at Zoo Southside. Edinburgh-based X Factor Dance Company presents an extended version of award-winning French choreographer Philippe Decouflé’s Morceaux Choisis made especially for the company. At times surreal, it’s an eclectic spectacle held together by an ensemble of excellent dancers. X Factor’s Alan Greg − self-styled leading Scottish choreographer − also includes his own rather beautiful yet unchallenging Ragnarök. There’s always some quirky humour in Company Chordelia productions and in Kally Lloyd-Jones and Michael Popper’s Red Shoes, the repeated spoken announcements and grumpy responses become more comedic and engaging with their repeating. Based on the Hans Christian Anderson story and the Powell-Pressburger film, highlights include a sleepy aerial duet with an earthbound pillow. The kids should be queuing round the block to see Tunnel Vision, Streetlamp Productions’ slice of street culture that shouts out for a more teenage-friendly timeslot. In young company Precarious’ Druthers there are quite a few vignettes and set pieces worthy of a fully fledged contemporary dance company − the highlight being an ensemble with suitcases and clever projections − that surpass a laborious lesson in philosophy presented by unthreatening Goth-like characters, and a dancer in a gasmask! Alongside GCSE study, 2FaCeD Dance Company’s young male dancers mix contemporary and break dance in State of Matter , masterfully choreographed with uncompromising vigour by Tamsin Fitzgerald. Scottish Dance Theatre’s versatile contemporary dancers perform Vanessa Haska’s ambitious Sorry for the Missiles!, a fierce and exhilarating study of a war torn society that displays the Company’s theatrical flair.

C Venues provides more dance sparkles. Object and Particle brings together Korean choreographer Ji-Eun Lee and four Czech contemporary dancers. With incense, fire and water, spot-lit athleticism and veiled Tai Chi moves, Buddhist calm and Western theatricality, Object and Particle is thoughtfully spiritual while playing with sexuality. Sorry, Love! is no big budget production but any lack of expenditure is made up for with pure energy from Pasodos Dance Company who present a courageous attempt at portraying the fatal breakdown of a romantic relationship. The Battle for Eire is an Irish dance myth and magic tale with a trim plotline but plenty of youthful exuberance from the all-schoolgirl cast and accomplished band playing live and loud. A duo of superb flamenco guitarists and a couple of delightful tap dancers isn’t enough to describe the playful virtuosity and variety of percussive sound produced at super-human speed by Tap Olé. They’re pure entertainment.

Sidestepping a little, takes in Fringe novelty Six Women Standing in front of a White Wall (being exactly that) with a rather attractive dance beginning becoming more installation and upmarket free hugs, prompting some audiences into ecstasies of interactive delight while leaving others bewildered by the lack of real engagement − also, Royal Ballet star Viviana Durante looking glamorous as Gertrude in a muddled adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and Ricardo Melendez’s spirited portrayal of Diaghilev’s protégé in Nijinsky’s Last Dance. Finally, Chicos Mambo’s Méli-Mélo II, a side-splitting delicious romp with fun puppetry, irrelevantly but good-naturedly topples many a sacred dance icon. But as the boys say, “Dance remains the star.” It’s a fitting finale to a fantastic festival. Whatever your taste, there’s plenty for every dance palate at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Michael Scott


An excerpt from this review published in Dance Expression Magazine November 2007