Dance at the 60^th Edinburgh Festival Fringe


Dance is alive and well at the biggest arts festival on the planet, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, now in its 60th year. With over seventy dance programmes to choose from in just three weeks, it’s easy to get overwhelmed.

First stop, Dance Base, which has become a showcase for an eclectic mix of contemporary and traditionally-inspired dance. This year’s five programmes range from Random Aspekts’ great fun break-dancing kids show Rock-a-bye B-Boy to Rosie Kay’s risqué Wild Party – for adults! The kids get a break-dancing excursion to dreamland with four pyjama-clad b-boys discovering and celebrating their differences. It’s playful, well-pitched, and well-paced with a hilarious copy-cat sequence. Adults indulge in decadent boozy jazz revelry, performed with on-stage jazz trio. However, it’s the dialogue that leads the rhythm of the dance in Wild Party. As the four dancers recite Joseph Mancure March’s edgy 1928 poem (of the same name) celebrating sex, drugs, and partying in the 1920s jazz age, they jump in and out of character, swapping partners with ever-increasing drunkenness – while the band remains sober! Dance Base’s Programme 1 presents Iskandar Dance Company’s El Saqiyeh, a calming homage to Suraya Hilal’s dance philosophy with its Arabic and Egyptian roots. However, despite pretensions of contemporary relevance, the dance fails to reveal anything of the dancers themselves. In contrast, Karl Jay-Lewin’s performers present a real honesty. It’s About Time is a whatever-you-do-it’s-dance dance piece that is refreshingly simple and fun. After a running start though, perhaps it’s because of Jay-Lewin’s reluctance to be defined that he fails to give us much to get our teeth into. On the other hand, Michael Popper is all purpose – and all muscle! His Unbounded is almost a concert work as we witness the space between the movements of Judith Weir’s earnest Unlocked, played on-stage by cellist William Conway. The composition is based on prisoners’ songs and Popper writhes and tenses, trapped within a window of light that is also his hope of salvation. It’s not long before we are drawn into his tormented yet beautifully drawn longing and struggle for survival. Jonathan Watkins’ Beyond Prejudice for The Curve Foundation Dance Company is boldly realised by the young Royal Ballet choreographer and is bravely attempted by his four dancers in what is a tight studio space for Watkins’ broad movements. Dance Base’s second presentation is an excerpts programme with, from Southern India, an extract from Samudra’s martial arts inspired The Sound of Silence performed by two gracefully synchronised and energetically powerful foot-stamping male dancers. X Factor Dance Company deliver an intense dual of domestic anger in an across-the-kitchen-table snippet from Certain Shadows on the Wall. Freshmess charm with a ‘wee dram’ of Scotch hip-hop in Vinyl Lino. Dance Base’s Programme 3 kicks off with Jem Treays, a dancer with bundles of on-stage charisma. In Walkie Talkie, he adopts the persona of a perverse grinning compere producing a soundscape by coughing into his miked-up hand. His is a pathetic journey from stardom to broken has-been, which ends with a jump into darkness. Janis Claxton’s solo Blue portrays the emotional unlayering of a strong but vulnerable woman experiencing changes of identity. It’s a mature study carried along by Claxton’s enviable technique. As outrageous camp Master of Ceremonies, Norman Douglas presents Four Strong Women – each looking for the perfect man. Frivolity is abandoned as the cabaret becomes darkly personal – and at times beautifully touching. However, there’s an unfortunate lack of emotional intensity – focussed anger, perhaps – and a more substantial tying up of its diverse parts.

Across town, Aurora Nova excites again as the Fringe’s most inspirational venue for cutting edge dance and physical theatre. Twelve companies compete for attention in two performing spaces. Aurora Nova presents dance at its most theatrical. Knots is Ireland ’s Coisceim Dance Theatre’s exploration of ‘tying the knot’. Brides and grooms in pristine white become tangled in a play of words, spilled beer and blood as wedding outfits are ripped and ruined. Considering the complexities of the subject matter, the impressive dancers (and modular set) seem capable of being pushed that bit more. Coisceim’s strength is its fine ensemble dancing but Knots is just not emotionally dangerous enough. In Cocoondance’s Lovers and other Strangers (from Germany ) we see a domestic quarrel as a couple play, making chalk marks on a giant paper floor-cloth. But a chalk line drawn between them becomes a border line as they argue, separate, come together again, exchange clothes – all of them! – in an attempt to settle their differences but end in head-to-head struggle. More than this, Cocoondance creates a choreographic tension with implications that go beyond a battle of the sexes. The spoiled floor-cloth takes on the appearance of a war-torn world map. Lovers and other Strangers is a close-body examination of changing relationships, victim and aggressor, tortured and torturer, of how strangers come together in conflict situations – worth a second look. In En Forme, French company Cie Didier Théron proves that dance can be tongue-in-cheek funny and seriously Contemporary at the same time. In a Kafka inspired bed-sit drama, four dancers roll, slide, find new ways of moving from chair to bed, bed to chair, and sculpt themselves perfectly into the shapes of the trashy furniture. Northern Ireland ’s Echo Echo Dance Theatre Company’s duo delivers a mature, gentle piece with surprising depth in, aptly named, Resonance.

Moving on, last year’s Fringe award-winners, Scottish Dance Theatre, perform No Stronger Than a Flower by Jan De Schynkel at Zoo Southside. In a dance dream of two worlds – a sexy slick modern (coffee-percolating) underworld and an old-fashioned window-framed cluttered interior – ex-Rambert dancer De Schynkel embraces the weird. Fishermen are released from their earthly deliberation – and the stools fixed to their trousers! It’s all mixed up and makes sense, both funny and sad, all at the same time. Every zany image is deliberate but known only to the choreographer himself. We are left to create our own narrative. More so, De Schynkel’s apparent wanderings are emotionally touching, especially a duet danced to the guttural tones of Tom Waits. Also at Zoo Southside, the balletic contemporary dances of Liss Fain from San Francisco are pleasingly danced and elegantly set to an eclectic mix of music, but it’s modest fare at a sizzling international event.

In Underbelly’s cavernous rough-stone-walled theatre space the spotlight’s on a pair of feet. And no wonder, these are the fastest dancing feet in the world. Edinburgh-based James Devine has danced with Michael Flatley but now breaks away from the orderly Irish dancing line and into an exhilarating ensemble show with quirky pop-playing grunge fiddler Ashley MacIsaac and versatile percussionist Dave Boyd – on pots, pans, and typewriter! Through video, pure fun, and hold-your-breath tapping we explore the roots, rules, and future of Irish tap dancing. Devine is a modest star but he never drops the tempo. And at a record-breaking 38 taps per second, this is dance furiously fast, stampingly loud, and passionately delivered. From Underbelly we scoot to the appropriately named Udderbelly, a huge upside-down cow shaped tent, where Zoo Nation’s Into the Hoods is performed. With colourful characters and video backdrops, it’s a great treat for a young audience and a chance to get up close to the energy of first-rate hip-hop – as seen on MTV!

Amidst all the stand-up comedy at Assembly Rooms, street-dance company MyoSung is on a rare visit outside South Korea . Award-winning break-dancers, gravity-defying spins, and moments of truly ingenious choreography come, unfortunately, within a programme of rather laborious politically-correct short sequences – with welcome snippets of Korean classical dance and bagpipe salute to the East-meets-Scotland experience. At Pleasance, and almost buried by comedy acts, Argentinean identical twins, the Lombard brothers, are synchronised multitalented street dancers but even more electrifying tap hoofers. When it comes to dreaming, they don’t sit around but, regrettably, they are in need of a good director for their autobiographical show Dreamers with its cringe-worthy moments. Nevertheless, it’s a must-see for all dance students.

Racing around town, there’s a mouth-watering feast of dance in a multitude of styles from intimate dance drama by interestingly named new-comers Arty Physical Intelligence to exuberant display of African dancing by returners Thatha from Zimbabwe . But whether it’s armchair or in-your-face Fringe fare you’re after, you can bet there will be even more dance at next year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe.


Michael Scott, Dance Expression Magazine November 2006