There are a lot of artists talking about illness at this year’s Edinburgh fringe. In the dance programme alone there are two shows about living with chronic pain, and this funny, angry and wistful one by Australian Liz Lea about a severe case of endometriosis that had her regularly necking 10 Nurofen before lunchtime.
Dancers make a living out of getting their bodies to behave and, as Lea tells us, by pushing the fine line between good pain and bad pain. Her pain tolerance was so high that her surgeon doubted she even needed the surgery (she really did) and compared cutting through her abdominal muscles to cutting through a brick wall – both are sources of misplaced pride in a body that was working against Lea and her dreams of having it all.
