Swings & Dramaturgy: Matthew Hawkins @ Edfringe 2017

In-The-Making Collective

Swings & Roundabouts

Opening: 7, 14, 21 Aug 15.30 | £10.00 (£8.00) | 2 hours, drop-in

Dance Base (Venue 22) 14–16 Grassmarket, Edinburgh

Engage with Edinburgh’s most accomplished independent dance artists, every Monday at Dance Base.

In-the-Making Collective is a gathering of accomplished, independent dance makers who work nationally and internationally but abide largely in Edinburgh. Focusing on the process of making, each performance within the Swings & Roundabouts is different, offering a variety of dance every Monday.

In-The-Making Collective will be in the studio for 2 hours on the 7, 14, and 21 August, improvising and creating to a live electronic score by composer Bill Thompson. Audiences are invited to enter the studio for as long as they please and find their own vantage points among the artists.

• What was the inspiration for this performance?

MH. Alongside fully and conventionally produced performances, I DREAM there could be a light-touch, streamlined way of performing. I am in search of this. A year ago I was approached by Merav Israel and Claire Pencak with ideas that affirmed we were on a similar track. We were, and still are, inspired to design and steer toward this kind of collective event that takes its own shape.

Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas?

MH. It’s always going to be a compressed experience of ideas in a heightened circumstance, methinks. Often the public discussion happens before and after, whereas I think the ideas mainly discuss each other within the show’s duration.

• How did you become interested in making performance?

MH. Dancing in a performance always brought out an array of intense feelings in me. I feel I ‘belong’ in that zone. Performance vindicates the training and growth I am constantly sharing in. Making performance means there is a performance I can find myself in.

• Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?

MH. It’s a collective approach, stemming from an individual initiative, steered by the three of us.

• Does the show fit with your usual productions?

MH. It’s an alternative: something that can’t be reached in the usual way, but yet feels compatible with an ongoing outlook.

• What do you hope that the audience will experience?

MH. A fulfilling epic space in time: a pleasure in the witness of something shaping before the eyes in real time and a lucid probe into the ‘how’.

• What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

MH. Strategies grew from an open-door invitation to inhabit studio 2 at Dancebase. Being invited stemmed from a programmer’s great experience of seeing our collective perform in a gallery space last year. In the new circumstance, we look for strategies to combine elements that we feel ‘work’ (a reference to practices we know) with the right kind of departures and risks that made our previous outing shine.

We opt now for fewer decisions to be made in any rehearsal process. We are hatching ways of deftly writing (and editing) short scores, to trigger and define structures and ‘events’ whose dancing is entirely fresh.

Formed by Matthew Hawkins, Meray Israel and Claire Pençak, performers will include Nicholas Bone, Ian Cameron, Amy Longmuir, Rosalind Masson, Alex McCabe, Sheila Macdougall, Brigid McCarthy, Tony Mills and Bill Thompson.

Pitch Dramaturgy: Skye Reynolds and Jo Fong @ Edfringe 2016

PITCH

Performed by Skye Reynolds, made in collaboration with Jo Fong

17th- 21st August, Dance Base Venue 22

6.45pm 

A double bill with A:Version by Indepen-Dance

Pitch is a realisation: how are we living our lives? The act of selling oneself, selling an idea. One woman: a provocation. Trying, winning, failing… however ridiculous, something has to change. Maybe the world? Do something! Pitch is fresh, funny, honest dance theatre.

What was the inspiration for this performance?
Skye 
I wanted to explore the concept of pitching - selling oneself or selling ideas… 

Having gone through that process to promote creative ideas for development, I found it challenging to present this particular ‘face’ – something artificial about it, almost painful! How to fit 'myself' into the 'sell'...what am I selling, what is of value? Then I stared thinking ‘How are we living our lives?’ How am I living MY life?

 Inspired by people and artists who make powerful, funny, insightful work, especially in this time of global turmoil, I wanted Stand Up, take responsibility. Then the question was how to turn these ideas into performance!

credit: Lucas Kao

I really wanted to work with Jo Fong, I love her work and I decided to create my first a solo - a woman coming of age at 44… 

Jo 
Standing up – get my act together. But actually getting Skye’s Act together.

For me – its about coming to an age where I have opinions and for some reason I haven’t not put them into the world. I vote but I suppose on some level I find it difficult to stand up and say what I think. To do something that implicates positive change. Somehow through the making it has also been revealed how powerful we are as individuals but also how powerless and futile the act of standing by what you believe can be.

The idea that things can be better and to make a work that could actually implicate change.



How did you go about gathering the team for it?
Jo and I met performing in Wendy Houston's Stupid Women and after that I was a Guest in Jo’s show An Invitation. I wanted to work further and dig more deeply into Jo’s process so I asked if she would mentor me to create a solo. 

We began with a couple of research weeks supported by Creative Scotland and Dance Base, not knowing what would come. We had a great time and discovered PITCH, a work that we believe in and have enjoyed creating so we are continuing to develop it together. Other team members gathered en route. 

Lucas Kao, filmmaker and photographer, has captured some lovely visuals and we share an aesthetic sense of humour. Sarah Buckmaster is creating lights (we met at Yorkshire Dance, when PITCH was presented as work-in-progress) and Anna Cocciadiferro made the costume. My daughter Lula makes an appearance on vocals whilst practising the piano…and I’ve been talking with producers about future possibilities. 

Jo 
We met doing a show by Wendy Houstoun for Yorkshire Dance’s Juncture Festival and then again through my work An Invitation…
where Skye played a guest role. 

I think Skye was somehow interested in my work and how working more together would help her to grow this new solo.


How did you become interested in making performance?
Skye
Things clicked for me in Sydney in the 90’s when I discovered experimental dance – performing in drag acts, jazz improv, art galleries, night clubs, site-specific. 

It was thrilling, I decided this was what I wanted to do and traded in a law degree. I loved the creativity, the complicity, the people. Performance is like an act of heightened reality that requires a focused thinking and an honesty that I find transformative.

Jo 
For me, it’s about having a voice, after years of being “just a dancer” a clay for someone else to create with. Reaching the age of 29 / 30, suddenly it was time to start working out what I think and how to articulate this to audiences. 

Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?
This was a new process for me, and my first solo. Using spoken word with movement, humour, a ‘live’ conversational style – I’ve been exploring these approaches to find a voice with my own work and within that of different choreographers over the past few years. 
Jo and I have discovered and created this piece en route. It’s about truth, made from authentic life material. 

The performance has to be alive and fresh, I'm addressing the audience, playing the score. It’s a real challenge to both ‘play’ and ‘be’ myself. I’m still working that out, uncovering layers and finding textures - how to make a ‘dance action’ within a performance frame?

Jo 
My process always changes with each show I make and in addition of course with each new collaboration. Skye and I have had fun making this show, I tried to lay out improvised experiences from which to draw material. Tried to support her in what is not an easy task. We discussed what we think about how we could create an artwork that is also an action. 


What do you hope that the audience will experience?
I hope the audience will feel a sense of connection with the performer, recognise moments within themes and material –trying, winning and failing. Can the work provoke thoughts about action, positive change? I feel there is a currency right now in terms of the search for values and place, it’s something we are sharing as a society and beyond. PITCH looks at this – How are we living our lives – it’s a question we are exploring.

Jo - Through the pilot showings we’ve had at Dance Base and Yorkshire Dance, people have noted how they have enjoyed the show, been touched, laughed and literally end up thinking about how they personally could change or do something to make the world a better place for everyone. 


What strategies did we consider towards shaping the audiences experience?
We wanted to present the work in a conversational frame, it’s live and it’s happening right now. It intentionally exposes the vulnerability of the performer as she explores how to ‘Be,’ taking confusing, impossible aspects of human existence and opening them up to the possibility of connection and laughter. 

We want to raise issues that we think are important, both individually and collectively. The audience are not asked to do anything but there is space in the show for reflection and perhaps the feeling of shared possibility for action.

Jo –
I suppose audience interaction is a big part of the work. Not that we ask an audience to actually do anything but the way the show is set up gives the idea that audiences feel very much a part of the show. Its funny, Skye does an amazing job of lightening the space almost the idea that anything could happen, she’s like a politically informed cartoon talent show optimist.

I suppose a super uber ambitious aim has been to influence audience members so that they actually start to think about what it is they could do. What action in their own lives either small or large would they be able to initiate towards positive change. 
We’ve been thinking about the end of the show a moment where it shifts from the personal to the collective and we hope to try out different endings. I’m interested in a promise, a pledge or even just a consideration, but maybe if I’m honest what I’d really like is through the humour and the seriousness of the show that there is a resurge of energy and hope. 


Do you see your work within any particular tradition?
New Scottish work!

Over the past few years I've been influenced by dance work that uses direct address, is multi-artform, humourous, ironic, approaches performance-making in new ways, addresses contemporary personal and politic themes. Communicates on different levels. 

Translated Churnalism: Wonders of the Universe

I decided, as an experiment to see what happened to press releases if I used Google translate, and translate them into arabic and back again. I am asking questions about the relationship between critical writing and puff pieces, by 'making strange' the familiar language of the press release!

M kpebiri na m, dị ka onye na ọmịiko ịhụ ihe mere pịa a na ọ bụrụ na m na-eji Google ntụgharị, na ịsụgharị ha arabic ma laghachi ọzọ. M na-arịọ questionsings banyere mmekọrịta dị n'etiti oké egwu dere na puff mbak, ke 'na-eme ka iju' maara asụsụ nke pịa ufụn!

I decided that I, as a tender and see why the press is that if I use Google translate, and to translate them to Arabic and back again. I ask questionsings to the critical relationship between the written and the puff pieces, the 'object' know the language of the press release!



The wonders of the universe is 20 minutes of laugh out loud, and family friendly, contemporary dance, at the sound of the tones North Faten Professor Brian Cox. He talks about how the universe began. Three dancers bring to life the greatest story told than ever, with a lot wibbling, boinging and cheerful public.

Wonders of the Universe by Carol Cysewski at the Edinburgh Festival 
Dancing the rule, 1 to 17 August 02:00 

Three come, bearded professors about the Open University in 1978 show history of the universe through the medium of contemporary dance.

Although the secular story, played by the voice of God disembodied Professor Brian Cox.

Cox when he speaks his lines better than 2011 BBC television epic wonders of the universe, there are a lot of thrusting, boinging wibbling and three dancers condense 13.8 billion years of cosmology, geology and evolution in a little over 20 minutes.

There slapstick humor and school galore. When leaving two of the dancers convulsions - as if tasered - after the Big Bang hits, and the balance of payments quick on his head soon secreted out, making the recession one comic on the ground.

Cox also talking seriously killer line: "We have seen the star was born, we saw a star dies," is pulled lifeless form of a dancer Gwen Emberton informally across the floor.

Seeing life hauling himself, and the silencing of Foundry, on the ground, with many pairs of external gills festive flutter in the breeze violently prehistoric.

It's funny and certainly family-friendly, but behind the humor is a three dancers with serious pedigrees. Polish-born Karol Cysewski dancers and dances also in the piece. Now based with his young family in Cardiff, Carroll left the national dance company in Wales in 2012 after seven years to focus on creating work. And joined by Welsh dancer Gwen Emberton, an artist involved in the Aberystwyth Arts Centre and Drew Hawkins, a young dancer has risen through the ranks of Sylvia Young and Brett School.

The wonders of the universe back to Edinburgh Fringe show for 15 long after the much-lauded one-time base in dance performance during the festival in 2013.

Let's Get Political...

 I can usually come up with a poor excuse for not getting involved in political action: truth is, I generally haven't thought enough about the issues to know what I believe, meaning any statement I make would be ill-informed. I get irritated by the behaviour of the Con-Dem coalition, especially since it appeared to express a public rejection of New Labour, coupled with a distrust of the Tories: despite Liberal Democrat's insistence, the UK government has acted as if it wants to just hand over all power and profit to their pals in business. Nevertheless, I can't bring myself to join any protests, citing suspicion of the organisers or a more general apathy about the effectiveness of campaigning.

Instead, I bang on about the importance of political theatre. I know that I missed most of the explicitly political pieces in the Fringe - The Economist, which dealt with the Scandinavian massacre, or that verbatim one about the oil slicks - and made do with work that had more of a "the personal is the political" vibe. The Shit, I am Son and, for a longer historical perspective, Bigmouth were my moments of activism.

Both The Shit and I am Son came out of Italy: the antics of Berlusconi in the past decade has led me to assume that Italian politics is hopelessly corrupt and the very public moral lapses of the country's leader reflect a more sinister political dishonesty. The Shit is more explicit in presentation than content: a naked woman describes her ambitions in a faltering voice, before singing of the Italian revolution in the style of Diamanda Galas. Her failure to control her body through diet, and to get that job might symbolise the struggle of a people towards self-determination, or the oppression of the nation, and the specifics of her life - the self-starving, the death of her father, the miserable first encounter with sex - have a brutal resonance.

Rather, The Shit reveals the process of internalised oppression: this particular life embodies the pressures of a society that is fascinated only with success, and abandons the honest ambitions of earlier generations for a chase after fame that mistakes sacrifice for self-degradation. Having garner attention for its unflinching monologue, and the naked performer, it literally wraps itself in an Italian flag and questions the impact of a country obsessed with surface on the individual.

I am Son shares a similar anger, caricaturing obsessions with nationalism, fashion, style and romantic myths through a bracing choreography. The three dancers hurl themselves through episodic sketches, reducing to clowns or elevated to icons, hiding behind masks only to reveal furious disappointment.

Based on a poem that rejects the revolutionaries of 1968 - and sound-tracked by children's voices that articulate a social despair, I am Son captures the confusion of a world made mad by information and broken promises. The lack of a coherent programme for change in both works echoes my own political pessimism.

Against this, Bigmouth offers a broader vision: a series of extracts from great speeches, each one made ironic by subsequent history. MLK is mashed up with Hendrix's version of The Star Spangled Banner; Socrates' farewell to the Athenians after his trial becomes a riposte to The Grand Inquisitor's condemnation of Christ. Again, there is little attempt to create a reasonable agenda for change, and history itself is exposed as a series of failed ambitions.  

Top Five for 85a

For eleven months of the year, I broadcast and write from Glasgow. This has caused me to be a terrible West Coast chauvinist, loudly proclaiming that the heart of Scotland's creative culture is on the left hand side of the map.

One group that have enabled my opinion are 85a - they might have roots in the visual arts, but water them with enthusiasms for live music, esoteric cinema and immersive performance. Their event at the Glasgow Film Festival converted The Glue Factory into an inverted multiplex, scattering the films of Svankmejer between installations, performances and shoved inside industrial sized boilers. They followed this up with Chernozem, their expressionist movie that included live action episodes, monstrous machines and a handy reminder of the link between industrialisation and totalitarianism.

Apparently, members of the Collective are coming to the Fringe tomorrow. I don't want them to be swept away by the horror of Edinburgh's mass appeal, so I am picking out anything that looks like it will chime with their aesthetic.

Chernozem made it clear that the Collective are tough enough to handle David Harrower's Blackbird, which looks unflinchingly at the issue of child abuse. By shifting sympathy between the characters, and refusing to follow an easy, judgemental line - although this is no apologist's piece - Harrower builds the intimate two hander to a moment of incredible intensity in the last few moments.

Originally, it was staged at the International Festival: now it is coming to the Fringe in a site specific production. Admittedly, it's in some offices, which is where the play is set, and I doubt they'll be going as far as 85a do. It's Harrower's characterisation of the couple that chills, and whether it is acceptable to describe this as a sort of love story opens up an entire can of critical worms about how theatre represents and persuades.

Edinburgh Training and Conference Centre, 17- 24 August


I'll get round to going on and on about I am Son  in a full post later, but I'd be remiss not to shout it out for 85a. They are three angry Italians, who take their cues from disillusion and distraction. Extracts from a poem that castigates the failures of the 1968 revolution soundtrack a vicious series of vignettes that lampoon fashion, nationalism, romance and alienation: high energy action from start to finish, it allies dance discipline, live art irreverence and a tiny taste of clowning (red noses are present, sardonic and tragic). Proving that dance can not only be political, it can be more precise than a script, I am Son is a refreshing burst of rage, controlled yet potent, when entertainment is being touted as the arts' answer to the idiocy of Our Friends in Westminster.

Dance Base, 16 - 25 August

Given how 85a feel about Eastern Europe - there is a strong Soviet Realism to much of their iconography - I'm calling up Future Tales (Sierakowski). It's rough and ready punk theatre, laughing at the vanity of a particular Polish leftist to make broad points about the failure of the Marxist cohorts to engage with society in a meaningful way. The music is loud, the performances direct, the bit about WWIII is funny and intense, and komuna//warszawa used to be anarchists. They decided that this wasn't working, so evolved into the closest thing Poland has to 85a.

Where 85a build huge sculptures, komuna are more likely to have suggestive mouse suits, but both gangs have a loud of the DIY, the punk, and the found space as a venue. Their dialectic against dialectic is superb, cabaret in style, their attitude harsh and their humour dark. Wait for the three way between the future Marxist dictator, the Christian and the Muslim churches. Apparently, it's all about the size...

Summerhall, 15- 26 August

I usually try to push my luck in the Top Fives, and roam around the venues, catching as much as I can... I am keen to mention  Zoo venues, because they have physical theatre and held a line against the encroachment of comedy... and Greenside is worth a visit both for its commitment to dance and the rather lovely gardens. But frankly, if I don't suggest the Polish work (any of it at Summerhall) and the Russians, I am not reflecting what I know about 85a.

Mr Carmen by Akhe: don't be fooled by the rash of stars it has been getting. This is not a strong theatrical production. Michael Cox from Across the Arts endearingly compared it to a live action Tom and Jerry cartoon: it stars the two Akhe guys as classic Russian style clowns (that is, like they have come out of a production of Waiting for Godot) arguing about who's the best out of the famous romantic opera. 85a would be interested in the way that these "theatre engineers" foreground the act of building a set and their ingenuity in staging: the runway that they set up around them is charming and funny, and their antics behind it can raise a wry smile.

For sheer action, I would still go for Mefisto Waltz, same venue, same austere Russian atmosphere but with the bonuses of a fairly coherent narrative and emotive choreography, but Akhe is a curiosity. It might even guide your future approaches to installation based theatre.

Assembly Roxy, 3 -27 August

 Finally, it would be wrong of me not to mention Planet Lem. Of course, if you don't like the idea of a roller-skating robot, an astronaut arguing with the author, who has ended up a bit like God, only on a video screen, a rebellion against luxury and a warning against the dangers of relying on technology, I am sure there is some comedy around the corner.

This is in the Quad, so it is a massive spectacle. It is based on the writings of a great science fiction author from behind the Iron Curtain - apparently, he heard rumours about American sci-fi and wrote his own, without having actually read any. That he came up with Solaris might be astonishing given the circumstances, or the result of not having wasted time reading the pap that makes up much of the genre (like any genre, kit  has its share of cliché and dilettantes).

Planet Lem feels like a brief episode in a larger story, imaging a future universe, inhabited by millions of species across thousands of world, policed by travellers who bring their ideas to civilisations not yet ready to accept them.There is a cool spaceship bit, too.

Quad, 18- 26 August

MEITHEALand Worst Case Scenario

The double album is a notoriously hard beast to appreciate: with four sides of vinyl to cover, it is difficult for any artist to maintain any initial vitality and the irony of an art form that begun in the sprightly single (three minutes of buoyant youthful energy) stretching over a length more suited to the weighty themes of opera is often enough for the critic to reject the project out of hand.

The dance double bill battles with the opposite problem. Choreography evolved, in both western and eastern traditions, into a long form: the use of specific gestural languages to fill in plot (a feature of both Bharatanatyam and ballet), the set formats of pas de deux or solo, the emphasis on large companies and spectacular costume all evolved in the context of an art form that would fill an evening. Yet the pairing of max.IMEALLdance and Taciturn Dance Company suggests that the shorter the piece, the sweeter the impact.


Billed together under Dance Base's overall theme of a journey around the world, this is not an attempt to contrast Scottish (Max.IMEALLdance) and English (Taciturn) approaches. Rather, they are connected by the youth of dancers and choreographers, the quirky use of music - ranging from Alvo Noto to Henry Mancini, this is a fine example of post-modern eclecticism, where high and low art, the populist and the experimental rub shoulders and find community - and a dedication to staking out the edges of dance and adapting the past's techniques to contemporary dynamism.

Perhaps Max.IMEALLdance's MEITHEAL could be read as a comment on the mechanisation of the dance process. The emphasis is on precision partnering, patterns revealed through the group's collective movement and the sparse, yet imaginative use of lighting that draws attention to the dancers. The focus and seriousness of the company ensures that the intention to represent the way that the group functions as a unit prevents any sense of the individual dominating the whole: the choreography responds more to the discipline of the corps than the spectacular show of the soloist.

Worst Case Scenario, however, emphasises the individuality of the three Taciturn members. They trawl through a series of disasters, explaining, in dance, how to best survive them. It's witty, playful, each episode a  brief burlesque of the logical advice given to those caught without a parachute or about to punched in the guts. The three women come across as likeable characters - when they work together, perhaps to attempt a saving hold, they never meld into a unit, like Max.imeall, but seem to resist the lure of merging by emphasising their individual physicality and identity.

If this double bill is more than a pleasure, or a linking between English and Scottish dance (I would call it contemporary but since Fringe 2011, the phrase has been rendered meaningless), it reveals current experiments within UK dance. Both are easy to define by critical jargon, although this would be far from a total explanation of their works and process: Max.IMEALLdance are a collective, disciplined unit emerging from the technical schools of dance discipline, while Taciturn are Dance Theatre with a dash of comedy and Live Art.

Of course, that last sentence says nothing about the actual pieces. It simply signifies that there is an interest in these works for certain audiences. Like star ratings, it flatters to deceive, an attempt by the critic to hide the fundamental problem of assessing dance (is it a totality that cannot be deconstructed into words without losing its essential meaning or the experience). For the record, both pieces give pleasure: MEITHEAL for the quality of dance, Worst Case Scenario for the personality and style.

The rock double album, however, remains a really bad idea, for the most part.

Dance Base, 16- 25 August 2012

Kind of Bharatanatyam

There is an Indian dance art form where the artist is forced to work with a well established range of gestures. She must choreograph on the basis of 108 key transitional movements, using the facial expressions (abhinaya) and hand gestures in such way that an unnatural or inappropriate movement would destroy the style. Mistaking Bharatanayam for any other dance is impossible. These artists must practice a particular discipline, that of allowing the idea or story of the dance to express itself through the communications of their hands and body in such a direct way that any audience, regards of their cultural context, can understand the meaning. 

The resulting compositions lack the eclectic influences and bravura displays of much western dance, but it is said that those who see well find something captured that escapes explanation. 

The conviction that the direct transmission is the most meaningful reflection, I believe, has prompted the evolution of the extremely severe and unique discipline of the Bharatnatyam dancer. Ensemble cohesion is a further challenge. Aside from the weighty technical problem of collective coherent thinking, there is the very human need for sympathy from all members to bend for the common result. This most difficult problem, I think, is beautifully met and solved in Mythili Prakash's Natyam.

As the painter needs his framework of parchment, the dancer needs her framework of time and space - in this case, the converted studio at Dance Base. Mythili Prakash presents here frameworks which are exquisite in their simplicity yet contain all that is necessary to stimulate an emotive performance with sure reference to the primary language of her tradition.

Mythili conceived the three settings to showcase the diverse aspects of Bharatanatyam and arrived in Edinburgh ready to explain to the audience what they would see. Therefore, you will hear how particular gestures indicate certain characters - Krishna signified by the flute - or conversations. Prakesh has performed these pieces internationally and I think without exception each of the three pieces expressed the core idea precisely.

Dance Base 16-25 August

With apologies to Bill Evans.

I Have Known All Along and Pretended Not To Only Out of Weakness

It's clear. It's clear. It's clear. It's clear. It's clear and true. It's clear and true and true and clear that the critic is artist as every attempt to define the gap between art and response will end up lost... the critic responds and are we supposed to believe that the artist is responding to nothing but life itself is not generating the art and the critic comes from the same place... and considerations of form make the haiku and review and the poem all equal...

Another day another we'll look at what political and social considerations are at play that keeps me down, thinks Criticulous. But now we see the true and clear and good and holy even holy urge that strives both in Luke Sutherland as he trembles the strings of his guitar and Robin Masson as he rolls deep oceans through the cello's bow and the sweat of Tony Mills, and Chris Devaney's final loving swerve... the last thing we hear is laughter as the child spins...

Heading home

Shorts...

It's cooler in the corner. Criticulous can command a better view of the room. Mills is like a giraffe over there... tall, elegant. Emma has been dancing with a young child so long it is as if they are a symbol of a young woman still in touch with her childhood. The girl laughs as she chases Emma in circles. Beautiful doppler effect.

Daphne has another question... and the contact improvisation is working... she talks through Facebook... she responds to my responses...

I have a question though... your next post is titled 'meaninglessness and being'

but in life, as in art and criticism, all of us (intentionally or unintentionally) look for a purpose/meaning

so is art for the sake of art meaningless?

Wau and Gemmell

Alienated Top Five

Ah, alienation. Once upon a time it was the Marxist explanation for why capitalism could exploit the proletariat. Now, it's a handy catch-all to describe the human condition. While I can't claim to have a complete understanding of the concept, I probably live it, so picking out five works that express the anxiety of contemporary existence ought to be a breeze.


Making the list even easier is The Stranger, an old school monologue straight from the pages of Camus' existentialist classic. Guilherme Leme is alone under the spotlight, telling the story directly and with the polished aplomb of an actor who has been a fixture on Brazilian TV throughout his career. There's no surprise twists - the hero wanders through his life, kills an Arab, gets tried, becomes a symbol of monstrosity for the local community, especially for his atheism - but Leme holds the attention and builds the sense of utter meaninglessness through his measured, nuanced delivery.


If The Stranger offers any respite from Camus' bleak vision of a reality uninhabited by the divine or even compassion, it is through Leme's style. A mixture of a bed-time story for Gaulois smoking adults and a Film Noir detective voice-over, his presence, and talent argue that meaning can exist in the sheer joy of experiencing another human revealing truths. So - perhaps the last word there goes not to alienation but art's ability to reconcile.

Summerhall, 3-25 September


A more explicitly political version of alienation is arriving at Dance Base later this week. Last time they came to the Fringe, Sanpapie got in a van, loaded it with food, and drove from Italy to Edinburgh. This time, they come fully prepared, starring an ex-footballer and ready to respond to the frustrations of living in contemporary Europe.

I am Son takes its cues from a poem that references the revolutionary generation of 1968, trying to understand what it means to be, and how our history defines our legacy. "Let's say it is a a show on the West by young Italian schizophrenics," say Marco di Stafano and Lara Guidetti (co-director and choreographer).

Seeing themselves as Western European rather than merely Italian, Sanpapie fit beautifully into the grand tradition of experimental live art and dance theatre: "the absolute masters are Pina Bausch , Marina Abramovic, Sasha Waltz, Wim Vandekeybus, Constance Macras," says Guidetti. The two art forms themselves that evolved from the twentieth century's struggle to cope with its own idiocy, shattering the traditional alienation between word and movement, idea and image to encourage an immersive, immediate engagement.

Dance Base, 16- 25 August


If setting up a bunch of shows called "the alternative Fringe" and declaring war on the big venues is any guide, Bob Slayer's pretty alienated. In person, he comes across as balanced and charismatic and his actual show sounds as if it incorporates self-deprecating wit, improvisation and a philosophical challenge to traditional concepts of stand up. Slayer would probably laugh at any pretentious attempt by me to define his work, and since one show featured his aunt wiping his bum, he'll probably be happier if I shut up.

Slayer used to be a tour manager, and his career started on stage started as the guy who would get pelted by fans of the Bloodhound Gang when they had a mid-gig fag break. His approach - half abrasive, half generous - will probably alienate some members of the audience. He's in.

The Hive, 3 -27 August


Although Marxism has managed to pretend that it is the only socialist path, there has always been a counter tradition that comes from the UK, and eschews the revolutionary for a more democratic critique of existing power structures: that what the Labour Party used to be. The world's first two handed version of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists comes from a novel squarely in this strand: a team of house painters are joined by social justice enthusiast Owen, and hilarity ensues.



Hilarity in the sense of Owen's attempts to inject a social consciousness into his fellow workers, that is. Written by a bloke who has done loads of Coronation Street episodes, this version of The RTP is plugged into the warmth and wit of northern working class theatre, and comes just at that time when the Coalition Government is doing its best to - hang on, what are they up to? I mean, I see the things they do, but I can't see any logic or sense in it.

Like many of the works in this political quarter, it emphasises not the big ideas but the daily reality of working class life. While there is an argument that political theatre is best aimed at contemporary wrongs, The RTP is more than nostalgia: it is a reminder of where this nation has been, and how we got past the excesses of industrial capitalism.


Assembly George Square, 1 -27 August


Finally, I need to give some love to the Creative Martyrs. Fringe veterans, Glasgow legends, a pair of misfits who flutter between cabaret and esoteric Eastern European mime, a pleasure to watch and the inspiration for many an uncomfortable post-show conversation. This year they are going their greatest hits, which will include songs about babies being bred for the purpose of being a bank of spare parts, warnings about the secret agenda behind supermarket loyalty cards, chuckles at the end of the world and the fun parts of war that people so often forget in their rush to condemn those hard working business men in arms manufacture.

Oh, it's a comedy show. After a fashion.

Voodoo Room, 1 -27 August



But who can feel alienated in the Edinburgh sunshine? Who can feel lonely in a crowd on the Royal Mile? When every show is full, and stars are being found on every street corner? Who, I ask you, who?

It's all part of the smiling capitalists' trap, man. Say yes to alienation.

PonyDance and Cacus: Knee Deep in Waitin'

Casus are an interesting proposition: the seriousness of their performance pulls them away from the acrobatic rut of cheeky tricks, but their Knee Deep never quite develops the narrative or choreographic potential of their artistic take on circus.

There seems to be something going on between the four performers (three male, one female), their impressive displays of balance and aerial, their soundtrack and props- but Knee Deep does not transcend an episodic series of spectacular turns. As a straight, impressive display of skills even the hula hoop routines, let alone the dangling from the ceiling, Knee Deep is shit hot and their demeanour hints at a willingness to choreography the routines into a coherent whole. 

Eggs are incorporated into balancing acts- not so much for symbolism but to add an element of drama to the displays of skill - and the performers' intense concentration is reflected in the music - it's like random play night on the Vile hard-drive, as Reich and the Aphex Twin float in and out. While Knee Deep is certainly breath-taking and skilful, Casus are promising so much more, threatening to take their movement vocabulary and apply it to the same ends as dance or physical theatre.

Spiegeltent, Assembly Gardens, 2 -27 August

"The idea for the show came from same place as most our ideas," says Leoni from Ponydance. "People watching and whatever is going on in our own lives." So, at the moment, Leonie and her three conspirators in  Anybody Waitin'? are possibly on the hunt for a man, and spend those long periods spent hanging around in bars honing their sharp banter and funky dance routines. 

The key features of the Ponydance style are back, after their success in 2010: site specific (Silk's Nightclub, down that dodgy street at the back of the Castle), cheeky audience interaction, sudden bursts of precision dance that send up, affectionately, the choreography of pop videos from Britney to hip-hop, the recognisable characters and on-stage costume changes. 

Where Casus take an art form associated with entertainment and get serious, Ponydance start from Dance Theatre - that fascinating hybrid of word and choreography, but mostly used to be very serious indeed - and slap it with broad humour and exaggerated sexiness. When they draw attention to their costumes, they are mocking the preoccupation with glamour and the trend for breasts to beat personality in the race for love, yet this satire never overwhelms the sheer fun of their recreation of the ultimate night out (it ends in love...).

"I would say our new show is more fun than the last one," Leoni says. "When we made it we aimed for more audience interaction and more laughs and I think we nailed it." Yep, they did. 

Silk Nightclub, 3 -16 August

Five for Daphne

Last year, Daphne and I were the coolest editorial team on The Fringe. We had help from Mark Harding, I guess, but The Shimmy Skinny was embodied by the pair of us, looking so similar, stomping about and arguing about the art. This year, you are in Cyprus and I miss you. But you'd get a kick from these shows.

I blew your mind by sending you to Turandot by Polish mavericks NeTTheatre. They are rocking Summerhall, but I have talked about them too much for one week: instead, let's go with one of my favourite books, now adapted for the stage. Varieties of Religious Experience might have something to do with a study that tried to categorise different mystical states, but comedian Adam Strauss has translated it into an hour that celebrates the potential of drugs.

Apparently, all the stories he tells are true, from falling in love with a PhD student to hanging out with the chemical underground. Inspired by the use of mushrooms as a treatment for OCD, Strauss wants to share his psychedelic wisdom.

The Royal Mile Tavern, 4 -25 August @ 6.10pm, Free

You remember that night we went to the overlong cabaret at the Sapphire Rooms last year, and how uncomfortable I was after the show ended? This year, there is a site-specific performance piece in the lap dancing club. It's like they copied that fictional review I wrote one time.

I had the poor lad from Cathartic Connections on the Radio Show yesterday, and gave him such a hard time about the venue, I felt guilty. But he did well: they justified the location by the content of Gob Shop, and he came across as appropriately ambivalent about the way that lap dancing has a presence in contemporary society.
Cathartic Connections are a young company, based in Glasgow and are devising their own pieces, using their skills. It happens that one of them has striptease skills, yet this insist that they are trying to break down the stereotypes. The whole sounds dark rather than decadent, and might answer some of the questions we had about the Sapphire's usual order of business.

The Sapphire Rooms, 7 -25 August

Next two from Dance Base: Curious Seed are back, this time they are The Woman Who Wants to be Funny. I've been shouting about this one ever since I saw the preview in Tramway, and now it is hooked up with A Corpo Libero - a show which, according to Lorna Irvine's Skinny review, gives new meaning to the phrase "bingo wings". It's Luke and Chris together again - they've been working together since the NTS introduced them - but they are also doing a three hour improvisation session on Tuesday. It's free and you'll get to dance along to Luke's magical musical, throw some shapes and watch me sit in the corner doing a live blog. Beat that!

Dance Base, 14 August @ 1pm

Remember the rows we had over hip-hop, and how you scored that interview with Flawless? You remember them - they were the big dance show last year. And you became their pal (and East End Cabaret... everybody loved you. I guess it made up for me being grumpy and sulky). Countryboy's Struggle is my hip hop theatre choice for you: a one man show that's all about the rap, and a tale of a boy from Cornwall trying to make it in London. That's a big like you coming from Cyprus to Glasgow, isn't it?

Anyhow, Countryboy himself tells the whole thing, through the medium of the rhyming couplet (mostly), throws a few freestyles and learns that perhaps the whole community thing isn't so great after all. Writer and performer Maxwell Golden is all over the raps, he worked with the Mighty Jonzi D and I reckon that hip hop theatre is the one thing that the UK gave back to the culture. Oh, apart from grime.

Golden has been touring the gig round the country, old church halls, regional theatres, so he's got the old story-telling skills off pat. It's not just about the rapping, there's compassion hidden behind the fronting.

He did a special video so you could see it, too. 

Pleasance Courtyard, 10-17 August @ 2.35pm 

Last choice - but there is so much you love. I am missing your company and this blog - and all the fun of the Fringe hardly makes up for it...

One more from Dance Base. Smallpetitklein did part of Within This Dust last year - the bit where Tom Pritchard fleshed out the truth behind Richard Drew's picture of the Falling Man from the Twin Towers. This version is longer, has Pritchard, a duet, and has had audiences sat in compelled, moved silence. As we so often said, dance expresses the emotions that transcend language.

Dance Base, 7 -19 August @ 6.30pm

It's Mayhem

I have seen a few shows, but I have had far more in the radio studio. In fact, I intend to spend the rest of the Fringe in the studio, making episodes of Subcity of the Fringe, only leaving to buy Chinese food and alcohol.

After the first day of recording, I am not sure I could pick out a mere top five - listen to the show and see who sounds friendly - but I had fun listening to Bob Slayer's outrageous life stories, was charmed by Clout Theatre (Lecoq gags ahoy) and was astonished by Christine Bovill's versions of Piaf's signature songs. However, I want to take a moment to remember a show that I saw before it came to the Fringe, and I know is lurking outside of the studio, somewhere in Summerhall.

Puppet. Book of Splendour is not something to slip into between comedy shows: stands ups might pretend to be soulful, but against the depth of feeling in Puppet, they'd ruin your appetite. Based around the Book of Job, with added caballa, it is a journey through the life of Polish theatre legend Kantor, with added angels in afro wigs and the darkest projections onto the darkest set. Astonishing, frightening and life affirming (as long as that live can accept a God beyond understanding), it's the kind of theatrical mayhem I adore.

Summerhall, 8 -13 August 2012

While I am on the mayhem tip, let's go for the Wau Waus. They have a new show - naked as they day they were born, apparently - and are in La Clique Royale. The Waus Waus once said that they chase the moment where everything is falling apart, when the act is on the edge of collapse: they have certainly smashed most of the boundaries that keep cabaret and performance art apart. Their erotic strategies are inspired by a punk ethos and a feminist intelligence, and they usually upset somebody by the end of the Fringe.

The Famous Spiegel Tent, 8- 26 August

Since I am now sitting in Dance Base, I reckon bANGER is worth a shout. It's Very Metal, a one woman take on the pleasures of being a young male, stuck in the bedroom and playing the games that always come along when the volume goes up to eleven. Warfare, rockin' out, a glance at the way a youth's mind can follow the beat into fantastic worlds. I am outside the studio as it is being performed right now, and it made my hair grow long when the tunes kicked in.

Dance Base, Various Times, 3 - 12

While I am on the Dance Base tip, I did chat to Alan Greig out of GOD (Grumpy Old Dancers) and Gary Clarke (A Beautiful Hell). It's a typical smart Dance Base double bill that does something original with pairing up distinctive masculine works. GOD works through the hilarious mismatch of the dancers (Greig does the camp, Andy Howett is the most macho man ever to front a Gaelic TV show about dance). Gary Clarke's choreography grows beauty from brutality and, after last years's solo, has pulled together a group of young dancers to flesh out his energetic, passionate vision of a life lived at full tilt.

Dance Base, Various Times, 3 - 12


So - there are my predictions for the most chaotic (but watchable shows), short of the car crashes and the big Polish action pieces in the Quad (I'll be getting to them soon). But, of course, the real mayhem is on the Royal Mile where I am doing my one man show Get Out of My Way, I Don't Want a Flyer. The bit where I punch a nun was described by the police as the most shocking moment you'll see all year: sadly, they didn't give me five stars but a five year suspended sentence.

Two for Two from Dance Base

And so it begins. My Fringe will always rotate around three venues - not that I don't love all of them - Summerhall, Dance Base and Zoo. Apart from a quick visit to Zoo Southside, which made me drool over the physical theatre programme, I have been playing catch up with Dance Base's huge summer season.

Morag Deyes, artistic director, has gone all out this year: the first runs are already selling out, and the second wave starts next week. I managed to get into a couple of beauties yesterday: Aleksandra Borys' Lost in Details and a sweet double bill, Time/Dropper and Driftwood.

Lost in Details  is another Polish entry: a solo, it takes Humpty Dumpty's words in Through the Looking Glass as a starting point for a twenty-five minute medley of different movement vocabularies and moods. Borys begins shy and in white, the awkwardness of her early grooves interrupted by elegance and style. Her character shifts from emotional stilted to wildly expressive, controlling her body through precise gestures and a choreography that articulates her interior states and sudden changes of temper. Like watching the research of a sophisticated dance scientist, who has never forgotten that choreography is as much about passion as technique, Lost in Details encourages an immediate, visceral response.

Over in Time/Dropper, Jose Agudo plays a similar game: this time, the body is masculine and the restraint of Borys is replaced by a more spectacular vitality. An integrated lighting scheme acts like a partner to Agudo, while his forceful presence flutters between moments of savagery and gentility. Paired with Driftwood, the performance has that same thoughtful intelligence that marks much of Dance Base's programme: Driftwood adds a cheeky humour and poignancy, two other qualities that Deyes loves to  programme.

Driftwood is the show for those who say they don't like dance: it kicks off in the disco - Luke Murphy is hilariously uncomfortable strutting his stuff, until the training asserts itself and he throws down a groove. Suddenly disaster strikes, he tumbles and the remainder of the show has him struggle to rescue the personality that only moments before was a fool on the dance floor. An evocative spoken word interlude, reflections on childhood, the spectre of natural disasters. It's like a short twenty minute essay on identity in the face of nature's immensity, and an object lesson on the power of choreography to express grand ideas in a small time and space.

Dance Base, various times 3-12 August 2012

I Think Not @Dance Base

Karl Jay Lewin is a force for good in Scottish dance. Based in Findhorn, an independent choreographer in both style and attitude, he founded Bodysurf in 2003 to bring dance artists further north and experience the pleasure of making and showing work in Findhorn bay. 

Yet, despite having one of the UK's most idyllic home bases, he is nipping down to the Fringe to reveal his reworking of  I Think Not by Deborah Hay.

"Well, I didn't know the piece," he admits. "I was one of a group of 20 international dancers/choreographers that commissioned Deborah to make a new solo on us. It's an annual project that Deborah has been doing at Findhorn for the last 9 years, through Independent Dance (London)."


The process is quite strict. "We commission her to make the solo which we learn over 10 days," Lewin explains. "We then have an obilgation to practice the piece for a minimum of three months, every day, before performing it in public."

Contemporary dance often creates it work through a "score" - a series of suggestions that can be improvised and worked into a performance over time. Hay's challenge to each dancer was to take the score and define it through their own practice.

Lewin elaborates. "What we get is the choreography and a number of questions - tools for the dancer. These are often paradoxical questions and relate to our perception rather than a particular way of executing defined movements."

It is from here that Lewin's version evolved. "We each make our own individual adaptations of the choreography. I bring my own sensibility and aesthetic to the piece."

The joy of Lewin's particular sensibility is that he is far removed from the usual approaches to dance: "I am personally interested in ambiguity. scared and the profane, meaningfulness and meaninglessness," he notes. in person, he is generous and thoughtful - and always willing to think the best of others. Bearing this in mind, he hands me a copy of Hay's score, showing me far more respect than I deserve.

The score is elegantly written, encouraging the dancer through a series of movements and suggesting moods and attitudes. It does leave plenty of space, however, for the dancer to find their own meaning behind the surface description. And its meditative, almost spiritual tone suggests that the piece is something akin to a ritual.

"This score is actually a combination of two scores, on of which, At Once, I learnt in 2009. It gives an idea of what we are given to go away with," he explains. "The first two lines in the score of I Think Not pose questions: What if I Think Not is not about the repression of thought but rather about the expansion and perseverance of the dancer's sensibilities? What if the choreography of I Think Not combines material that supposes a correspondence between the dancer's aesthetics and her/his survival?"

Lewin then explains that aesthetics, in this case, mean more than just style: "Aesthetics as in my relationship with space, audience, time passing, my whole body et cetera." Appropriately for a creator, he adds that he is not "a fan of describing things in negative terms, but its useful as a beginning sometimes. It immediately sets up or plants reference points in mind that I am saying I am not."

Lewin's approach led him towards a tactic that is similar to the one used by the serialists in classical music at the start of the last century. "I am interested in making work that is democratic, in that one bit is no more important than another." There is also a hint of Buddhist philosophy in the score: "Deborah talks about 'here and gone' no attachment to anything," Lewin adds. "I like that and it appeals to my interest in the mundane and throw away. Which curiously is the opposite of day to day life (which of course includes and is not separate form my practice) in which I deplore the throw away culture!"

Dance Base

3-12 August@1.30pm

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