FESTIVAL DANCE | Reviews
GRACE Exploration of trauma almost reaches full potential ●●●●●
It’s testament to Emma Serjeant’s immersion in her work that you could forget this is a circus piece. There are no fourth wall-busting moments of spontaneous applause, no matter how intricate and arduous her hand balances, contortions and flights are. Even in these boundary-pushing years of post cirque nouveau this is an unusual step.
Serjeant found Fringe fame as part of Australian troupe Casus,
and has developed this solo show with director John Britton. It’s framed with a loose, fragmented narrative; a woman’s life is blown open and scattered across the stage following a moment of earth-shattering trauma. Serjeant’s movement vocabulary is the reckless, precarious one of circus, but she uses it like a dancer, crafting patterns, drawing physical lines into emotional ideas. Spinning down from perilously high in a tiny hoop, she tells us she has woken in confusion. When later she climbs through the hoop, a contortion act becomes a discombobulated series of snapshots – she is literally out of sorts.
There are huge, fascinating notions at play here – what makes a person, other than flesh, bone, memory and desire, and what of this matters when we stand on the precipice between life and death? But the script feels a bit like a victim of its own fragmentation, stuck in a loop that doesn’t progress beyond a certain depth. Some of the lines are awkwardly blunt, and hints about the darker side of Grace are dropped but never developed. A blasting, wrecking, messy revelation of an imperfect life,
Grace doesn’t feel as if it hits its full potential. Nevertheless there is something trailblazing about Serjeant’s approach, and it will be hugely exciting to see what she does next. (Lucy Ribchester) ■ Assembly Checkpoint, 623 3030, until 28 Aug (not 15, 22 & 23), 5.30pm, £13–£14 (£12–£13).
ONCE . . . Cruel yet intoxicating love story ●●●●●
BINARI Taking souls of the dead into the afterlife ●●●●● JOLI VYANN: IMBALANCE Examining digital equilibrium in daily life ●●●●●
Love has never before hurt quite the way it does in the hands of Derevo. The Dresden-based physical theatre group has become synonymous with a particular kind of gaudy-grotesque, pioneering clown work that has spawned its own Fringe sub- genre. This show first appeared in Edinburgh in 1998 but happily it feels timelessly intoxicating. In a black and white cubist metropolis,
waitress (Elena Yarovaya) has caught the eye of downtrodden clown (Anton Adasinsky); after a tussle with an incompetent Cupid we know this isn’t going to be easy for the lovers. Indeed the quest Adasinsky embarks on to win Yarovaya’s heart is touching in its bathos, monstrous in its cruelty.
From his cringing inability to look at her as he hands her a rose, to the orgy of chaos that erupts when he bares his soul, to the pillory-heart that imprisons him, love in the Derevo world is a degrading, humiliating and confusing business.
You might think that Once would leave you feeling bleak. But the performers carry such verve and tenderness it’s hard not to feel that a broken heart is a fair price to pay for the joy of taking a chance on love. (Lucy Ribchester) ■ Assembly George Square Theatre, 623 3030, until 29 Aug (not 15, 22), 11.30am, £12–£14.
64 THE LIST FESTIVAL 11–18 Aug 2016
This is a serene and mysterious crash course in Korean religious beliefs, led by a cast of seven, drumming, singing and dancing. Ohgugut is a ritual where a shaman comforts the soul of the dead before they enter heaven. Through prayer and exorcism, they banish bad demons and get rid of any ‘lingering affection for this world’ to ensure a smooth passage into eternity.
A large white origami boat symbolises the journey into the land of the dead, and a four-eyed mask leads the funeral procession (it’s worth reading the notes handed out before the lights drop just to follow the basics). The mother has a tough lot – two boisterous sons, a cheating husband, a couple of brushes with death, then a bumpy ride into the afterlife where she doesn’t want to go.
With help from various plaintive and joyful Korean
folk songs, the shaman helps her and her sons process their feelings and transition into the next world. Expect a beautiful, if occasionally baffling, hour using glowing paper lanterns, low sung drones, traditional pungmul dance – where a drummer spins a long silk ribbon on his hat – and mask theatre to act out the ritual. (Claire Sawers) ■ Assembly Hall, 623 3030, until 29 Aug (not 22), 12pm, £12–£13 (£11–£12).
Such is the integration of tablets, phones and laptops into our lives that in this show, performers Jan Patzke and Olivia Quayle don’t disconnect from their devices even when dancing. It's an innovative marriage of theme and form, using the idea of physical balance to explore digital equilibrium. In Imbalance, choreographed by Jonathan
Lunn, dance is used to examine the positive and negative physical and emotional changes the body undergoes in its interactions with devices: shoulders hunch; ears press to phones; two faces stare peacefully at the same middle distance. Even when hands free (of technology) the choreography has a lithe, mechanical feel, graduating to whirling passages of clockwork speed and smoothness. The dynamic of the pair is saturated in trust, which makes them a joy to watch. But although there are dark edges to Imbalance,
the piece feels gentle on its ideas. Ultimately the ending, a cycling back to the start followed by an intricate duet, seems predictable in its uplifting message of human-to-human connection. Imbalance is maybe a bit too well balanced to have anything truly daring to say. (Lucy Ribchester) ■ Underbelly’s Circus Hub, 0844 545 8252, until 22 Aug (not 15), 7.30pm, £11–£12 (£10–£11).