list.co.uk/festival Previews | FESTIVAL DANCE
DILEMMA Solo journey along the path of life
STATUS ANXIETY & PIECE OF MIND Hip hop moves from contemporary choreographers ECHOLALIA Clown show tackles taboos of autism
As an erstwhile champion gymnast, ballerina, pantomime and circus artiste and now award-winning solo theatremaker, Russian-born Fringe novice Olga Kosterina might know a thing or two about how to face a dilemma creatively. Of her show, Dilemma, she says: ‘All the action relates to the mental states through which humans pass, and the images used in the piece are straight from – and to – the heart.’ In previous self-designed works, Kosterina has employed a pottery wheel and fire. Dilemma is more minimal, eschewing special effects or loads of props (although there are curved wands, elegantly handled) in order to plumb the body’s emotional depths.
‘It’s a story about survival, growth and victory,’ she reveals, ‘the desire for a new life and the happiness born from seemingly small, natural things.’ There’s a dark side to Kosterina’s metaphorical evolutionary stage journey, however, referencing stress and struggle but ultimately with a promise of salvation. Her physical style is delicate yet strong, precise yet instinctual. She sums it up best herself: ‘I try to act with an open soul and a prepared body.’ (Donald Hutera) ■ Hill Street Theatre, 226 6522, 3–25 Aug (not 13), 1pm, £11.50–£13.50 (£9.50–£11.50). Previews 1 & 2 Aug, £6.
You only need to look at the line-up for 2012’s Breakin’ Convention or walk past breakdancing buskers on Princes Street to see that Scottish hip hop dance is alive and thriving. Dance Base has brought together two of the movement’s choreographers for a double-bill of hip hop theatre that promises both sharp moves and social commentary.
‘Hip hop theatre works alongside the culture that already exists, but it’s a different medium from, say, competitive hip hop dance,’ says Emma Jayne Park, the choreographer behind Status Anxiety. ‘You have the freedom to layer things in the same way that contemporary choreographers do.’
Park’s piece aims to explore the way social media affects us, using hip hop’s movement vocabulary to recreate social media stereotypes. Her work will be paired with choreographer Ashley Jack’s Piece of Mind, a voyage into sociopathy, that uses the film version of American Psycho as its starting point. ‘When you go to see hip hop, you expect to walk
in and see someone doing something huge,’ says Park. ‘But this show is very much about attention to detail.’ (Lucy Ribchester) ■ Dance Base, 225 5525, 2–17 Aug (not 5, 12), times vary, £6–£8.
‘I don’t know if I would categorically say clowning is the best medium for the subject of Asperger’s,’ says Jen McArthur, performer in New Zealand-based Kallo Collective’s show Echolalia, ‘but I do think it is an excellent medium.’ McArthur developed Echolalia – named after the term for automatically repeating a word or phrase spoken by another person – after she began working with autistic children on a holiday programme. In the solo show, which fuses clowning and physical theatre, McArthur plays Echo, a woman with Asperger’s syndrome preparing for a big job interview.
‘Clowning portrays people who meet failure time
and time again but don’t get fazed by it,’ says McArthur. ‘There is a strength in the openness; the audience recognises our common humanity and accepts the fact that no one is perfect.’ For a while McArthur was concerned that people
who hadn’t seen the show might misinterpret her intentions and take offence. But the reactions afterwards have been positive. ‘There is something about Echo that almost everyone relates to – maybe something universal about feeling socially gauche.’ (Lucy Ribchester) ■ C aquila, 0845 260 1234,1–26 Aug (not 12), 3.40pm, £7.50–£9.50 (£3.50–£7.50).
SLUTS OF POSSESSION Sound, vision and physicality
Driven by what she calls ‘a deep desire to try to understand the human condition in new ways, and how meaning can be explored through the body as well as through language’, Rosie Kay is transforming herself into a possessed slut.
Sluts of Possession is the deliberately provocative name of the new duet that the UK choreographer and Fringe veteran has created with dancer Guilherme Miotto (Kay’s fellow inmate in 2005’s Asylum) and filmmaker Louis Price. ‘It’s not pretty,’ says Kay of the title. ‘It’s out there. But it’s going to be a full-on show. Guilherme and I are very intense, experienced performers interested in going to new places together.’ The show has arisen out of Kay’s plunge into the hallowed halls
of academia as – get ready for it – resident artist of the Unit for Biocultural Variation and Obesity in the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at the University of Oxford. If there’s anyone who can crash through the fusty walls of higher education, it’s Kay.
‘I’ve always been interested in creating raw, visceral, highly athletic work,’ she says, ‘but it’s becoming more honed into a body of work dealing with specific areas of extreme physicality.’ In Sluts of Possession, she’s combining primal emotions, dynamic movement and archive video and sound in what should be an exciting, even dangerous synergy of overlapping, layered forms of expression. Kay’s new work is part of a bigger concept, Acts of Possession – a versatile entity that works indoors and outdoors, in theatres, galleries or museums, in digital form or as a lecture. For her it’s about ‘challenging ways in which a piece of work exists and can be experienced’. Her ultimate goal? ‘To get the audience to feel immersed in whatever they encounter.’ (Donald Hutera) ■ Dance Base, 225 5525, 2–23 Aug (not 5, 12, 18, 19, 21, 22), times vary, £6–£8.
1–8 Aug 2013 THE LIST FESTIVAL 59