Will these two dancers find any common ground? She’s slight and tentative, he’s buff, inked and smiley. They step forward to introduce themselves in the soft strawberry light but things soon become fractious. Part of the Edinburgh international festival’s “refuge” strand, celebrating artists’ trans-global journeys, We Are Monchichi is a sweet, if repetitive and sometimes thin, piece about reaching an understanding.
Designed for young audiences, the show admirably doesn’t condescend to them. Choreographers Honji Wang and Sébastien Ramirez build on the cast’s own stories. Shihya Peng is Taiwanese (not, she insists crossly, Chinese) and now lives in Paris; Marco di Nardo is Neapolitan (not, he insists crossly, Italian) and now lives in Berlin. Between them they speak loads of languages and can’t manage a friendly conversation in any of them.
