Watching recorded dance on your laptop at home couldnt be further from the Edinburgh fringe experience: the buzz on the streets, the overload of shows, the odd venues and out-there experiences. But theres still plenty thats out there on the digital side. You can get your fix of, say, naked experimental circus, in Race Horse Companys ODD for example. Its not wholly naked, I should say: later in the solo, Rauli Dahlbergs body wrapped in clingfilm, flipping on a trampoline is rather mesmerising.
There are more trampolines in a meditative quartet Ground Unplugged; four dancers on trampettes locked in a synchronised bounce. Or theres Touchdown, a half-dance, half-physics lecture from Taiwan, in which Cheng Hao combines discussing the reckless and unpredictable nature of electrons with insomniac musings on the meaning of life, while seemingly peeling himself from the ceiling.
Glasgow-based choreographer Mele Broomes puts a note on her videos best viewed in a dark room to encourage getting the mood right. She wants to suck you into her world, where camera, sound, light, movement and design are all thoughtfully choreographed, atmosphere slowly brewing. Her film Grin opens with what looks like the twinkling lights of an Edinburgh cityscape, but what would be Arthurs Seat turns out to be the dancers legs on the floor, slowly unravelling, dressed in tinsel tassels like a future-disco Big Bird.
Subverting the hypersexualised Grin by Mele Broomes. Photograph: PR
Broomes is a fascinating, intelligent artist, often exploring and elevating black lives and culture (a second film, Wrapped Up in This, directly features the voices and experiences of black women). In Grin, dancers Divine Tasinda and Kemono L Riot subvert elements of African and Caribbean dance, often seen as hypersexualised. Here, Tasinda lies on her side, head propped on hand, bored face, bottom bouncing in a quick twerk; or she fractures and deconstructs, or absorbs movements into her own engrossing presence.
For a more standard theatre experience, Helsinkis Carl Knif Company has Fugue in Two Colors, part of the From Start to Finnish season. Its recorded on stage, the audience in view, and its fairly straightforward, quality contemporary dance, with some unexpected twists and turns. Set to some of Shostakovichs preludes and fugues, it takes the connection between music and dance as its starting point; for the most part that relationship seems a disinterested one, with little in common between the intense, dark piano and the blank slate of the dance and its vacillating rhythms. The choreography itself, however, is all relational: groups of bodies working out how they rearrange in response to one other, whether thats flocking behaviour, mimicry or marking each other like wary opponents, or coupling sympathetically in some compelling duets.
Another big international showcase, from Quebec, brings beaucoup de circus. Two shows from Flip Fabrique, Six Degrees and Blizzard are theatrical and comical, creating whimsical worlds and scenarios in which to insert their expertly drilled skills in hula hoop, wire walking, cyr wheel, acrobatics and the like. Another big name, the 7 Fingers, offers a film, Out of Order, that gives more of the earthy, vintage, big top feel, full of fantastical freaks and eccentrics (an empty big top, that is, being a Covid-times film). The performers transport us to an after-dark playground, with the emotional ups and downs of an intoxicated evening. For all that it was made in times of isolation, this is a show with a real festival feel.read more
Edinburgh fringe dance and circus roundup – naked trampolining and alt-twerking
