A festival as overstuffed with acts as Edinburgh brings on the worst kind of Fomo. You walk past a blur of superlatives and star-ratings on posters and think: where are these amazing shows and why haven’t I seen them? Of the dance and circus shows I sampled throughout the first week, hardly any were knockouts, but there were interesting ideas, visual stunners, some disappointments and a surprise.
Most interesting is a piece that tries talking about Aboriginal land rights through acrobatics. The title of Australian company Na Djinang Circus’s Of the Land on Which We Meet references the ritual of acknowledging the traditional custodians of land where performances take place. This circus trio – comprising one performer of Indigenous heritage, one descended from colonial settlers and one from a family of more recent migrants – are grappling with the meaning of it. They’re also grappling with each other’s bodies: rolling, flipping, stretching, lifting. A woman walks across the landscapes of the other performers’ forms, the rocky terrain of shoulders, knees and elbows. She even balances her whole weight on the flexed toes of another. Indigenous Australian Johnathon Brown is the base – in circus terms, that’s the solid foundation for others to balance on or fly from, and that metaphor lives through the piece.
But it needs a bit more stagecraft in terms of delivery, more synthesis between words and actions. The performers also have stories about their own journey with this show – including of performing in one venue where they acknowledged the wrong custodian. They’re mortified, but also not sure how mortified to be: was it “an honest mistake or a proper shame job?” one asks. There’s a lot to chew on and a strong piece here, potentially.
Another high-concept show comes from Sacha Copland and New Zealand’s Java Dance Theatre. Anatomy for Accountants starts as a comical cataloguing of the value of body parts. How much would it cost to replace the work of the pineal gland, for example? £179.50 a year, for a synthetic version of the melatonin it produces. There are cute, frantic or fun dances to show off said limbs and organs. Copland then heads deeper into her body’s worth, and into some personal, difficult subject matter. It is hard to walk that tightrope, to manage the switching of tone and keep the concept effectively threaded through everything. But this is a show built on an original idea, and it is always brave to be so exposed.
Elsewhere you can find top-notch technique and less engaging concepts. In Ghost Light: Between Fall and Flight, the duo Maxim Laurin and Guillaume Larouche of Québec’s Machine de Cirque forge a show from just one piece of apparatus, the teeterboard – like a seesaw from which they launch each other into somersaults – and their skills are, wow, chef’s kiss, as people apparently say now.
They gradually up the ante throughout the hour, with awe-inspiring arcs through the air, joyful soaring in single and double turns, twists and pikes. There’s a surprise move where they launch themselves upwards and suddenly point their legs to the ceiling as if they’re hanging upside down in the sky. This is all great. The show that goes around it, however, inspired by theatre ghosts, is the standard whimsy/slapstick of Francophone circus. Not unlikable, but nowhere near as inspired as their acrobatics.
For conventionally beautiful imagery, you could do worse than Paradisum, by Hungarian circus dance company Recirquel. All rippling muscles and wind machines ruffling hair as aerial feats unfold ever so slowly against an illusory set of shadow and sparkle. At one point, the backcloth drops to reveal a woman apparently suspended in space. It’s physically impressive (the control needed when you’re working so slowly is immense), undoubtedly beautiful (every moment could be a shot for the poster campaign), and just occasionally bordering on ponderous.
There’s beauty also in Sleeper by South Korean company Jajack Movement, as four women combine elements of Korean traditional dance, shamanism and contemporary choreography. Meanwhile, a man is trapped inside a plastic cage. It’s also an example of why working out what’s happening inside the mind of a choreographer can be a mysterious business. You would have to be told that this one is a response to the climate crisis.
The most striking optics might be in Palingenesis from Taiwan’s D_Antidote Production, which features the concertina-ing limbs of three conjoined, near-naked men wearing rubbery masks with sculptured features. It’s creepy, frankly, and also a bit creepy-crawly, like a six-legged, three-headed insect moving in ever-evolving symmetrical shapes. A flesh-coloured kaleidoscope.
Often the disappointing festival shows are people starting out, testing ideas and gaining experience, but one of the bigger ones not to fly was Corazón by Circolombia, a company that does great work with young people in Colombia. While this spiegeltent production with a cabaret vibe had a distinctive Colombian R&B soundtrack (and a live singer), the shaping, the charisma and the crowd work didn’t catch fire, and the circus skills just weren’t up to the (admittedly very high) level you can see elsewhere in Edinburgh this month.
Finally, an unexpected pleasure: three shows only from veteran Scottish dance artist Alan Greig in Within Reach. Completely lo-fi, gathered in a corridor next to some lockers among other locations, 62-year-old Greig treats us to monologues and dance vignettes, recalling Tennessee Williams and Joan Crawford with wit and warmth. “Old age ain’t no place for sissies,” he quotes Bette Davis, but the joy of older performers is they know exactly who they are; by dint of defying the art form’s cult of youth, an older dancer can be a rebel and a safe pair of hands.
Of the Land on Which We Meet is at Assembly Checkpoint, until 25 August. Anatomy for Accountants is at Summerhall, until 26 August. Ghost Light: Between Fall and Flight is at Underbelly’s Circus Hub on the Meadows, until 24 August. Recirquel: Paradisum is at Assembly Roxy, until 24 August. Sleeper is at Assembly @ Dance Base, until 18 August. Taiwan Season: Palingenesis is at Assembly @ Dance Base, until 25 August. Circolombia: Corazón is at Assembly George Square Gardens, until 25 August.
