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• edinburgh-fringe
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With the Commonwealth Games generating a buzz around sports in Glasgow, it doesn’t seem out of place for the Fringe to include dance or physical theatre pieces about sports, feminism, and competitiveness.

Agata Maszkewicz brings Polska (****)  into Dancebase’s studio one. The piece kicks off with a series of ‘epic fail videos’, starting with lighter ones and moving into the darker, more dramatic ones later on. Maskewicz appears in her Polska sprinter’s sports gear, twerking, folk dancing, and simply grinding her way to a climax. This is intermittently presented with jokes that are either sexist or homophobic, perhaps intended as a grim showcase of what society considers entertainment, since sport seems to compete with pop music, and stand-up comedy. While funny in parts, the intelligence of Polska pokes at the outrageous, grotesque, and gross that seems to have slipped into convention – just think of crass comedians, or twerking popstars. When a female dancer performs these, it becomes obvious exactly how much people can get away with, due to the nature of showbusiness.

Riccardo Buscarini’s Athletes (***) presents the dark side of competitive behaviour, with a more Butoh-esque yet aggressive representation of athletic performance. As the three performers move across the floor, they make a very obvious shift from a quiet, harmonious unity to an array of competitive sabotage manoeuvres that involve mutilation, cruelty, and injury. Twisted in both its content and its visuals, it's no real surprise Athletes won the Place Prize for 2013 (sponsored by Bloomberg), but it nonetheless feels slightly flat, as if there is no start, middle, and end. Perhaps this is because it feels as though the people involved could be anybody, and as though the piece is looping, and perpetuating an inevitable cycle. The white costumes leave the context open to interpretation – whether the performers are competing for a medal or for arts funding, it is not made clear. 

Even as the Commonwealth Games draw to a close, these two pieces remain relevant, not only because of their associations with sport, but also due to the breadth and openness of interpretation they allow for. Different people will 'read' different things in them, and that is their beauty.