2Faced

Leaping into the limelight in 2008 with State of Matter, a family friendly fusion of street dance and explosive, eclectic choreography, 2Faced Dance Company rapidly became Fringe favourites thanks to their erotic masculine athleticism. Artistic director Tamsin Fitzgerald wedded the fashionable enthusiasm for male dancers with spectacular set-pieces to bring contemporary dance out of the margins and into the Underbelly's spotlight.

Not content with popular acclaim, Fitzgerald went underground the following year for Still Breathing, a darker, dub-step influenced journey through urban wastelands that confused reviewers expecting more of the same tops-off hot boy action. In one of the best press releases ever, the company celebrated the backlash, re-affirming their association with more experimental choreography.

"As a company we see it as important to reinvent ourselves from time to time," Fitzgerald reflects. "Keep our work fresh, generate new audiences and challenge perceptions." For their third Fringe entry, In the Dust, Fitzgerald has allowed other makers to shape their destiny.

"I thought it would be interesting to explore what a male choreographer would create on an all male company," she continues. "Tom Dale's work interested me because I felt that there were certain similarities in his use of music and the energy that he created with his dancers. I had met Freddie Opoku-Addaie on a few occasions and felt that his work was more theatrical and had more narrative than mine. I also felt that both choreographers would be able to work with the mixture of stylistic approaches and dancers that the company has."

Fitzgerald's path may have taken her away from the crowd-pleasing tricks of old - which would have become sterile - 2Faced were one of the earliest groups to integrate b-boying into a more complex narrative, heralding the likes of Flawless, who have a similar, if more populist, basis in breakin'. When she covered more serious territory in Still Breathing - the sinister pulse of the music patiently propelled the performers into claustrophobic clusters - she was maintaining the spirit of the b-boy, if not the cliche.

"It's hard to shift perceptions of what you do and I'm sure people still think of us as the 'all boy group who take their tops off'," she admits. "As a company we do what is right at the time, for us, and that we are considered by some to be rebellious and not sticking to the rules. But I like that."

The new three works gathered together for 2011 all maintain what Fitzgerald calls "the three traits that 2Faced have always had: the athleticism, masculine energy and fusion of urban and contemporary styles." Dale, no stranger to Edinburgh himself and sending an installation piece along to Dance Base this year, has been inspired by the music of Shackleton to imagine the apocalyptic doom that lurks behind most dub-step;Opoku-Addaie has a poke at the politics of Olympian dreaming; Fitzgerald's entry visits post-earthquake Haiti.

"The company is now at a very different stage than it was at when we did our first Edinburgh Fringe in 2004," she affirms. "These new works will really push the perceived vision of what 2Faced Dance was and is." Certainly, 2Faced are restless and relentlessly inventing, evolving from the lean peacock displays of 2008 into the menacing, sensual outfit of today.

That isn't to say that the impressive moves have disappeared: they have been put at the service of a more intense vision. While State of Matter got the encores and screaming mums, In The Dust follows Still Breathing by insisting that dance is often the most emotive medium for expressing a detailed, serious vision of reality. And while Fitzgerald acknowledges an affinity "with companies that create muscular and athletic work such as Australian Dance Theatre and Hofesh Shechter", she also believes that her particular dance vocabulary sets 2Faced apart.

"We don't fit into any mold because unlike a lot of companies we use language from b-boying and other urban styles. This doesn't always sit well with people, unless it's on your TV screens on Saturday night," she says.

The trend for young men to use dance as a medium to express their masculinity has come to the fore because it features remarkable acts of physical prowess - Company Chameleon stand on their heads while meditating on the maturing process - and undermines years of cheap gags about dancers' strength and effeminacy. Hip-hop deconstructed much of the mockery by introducing dance that expressed masculinity, a counter-balance to ballet's men-in-tights. Having done the showing out, 2Faced strayed into serious territory, perhaps a natural journey given Fitzgerald's beliefs about performance.

"After all the arts are surely there to spark a reaction," she suggests in response to questions about the debate surrounding their new direction. This desire to provoke, however, is paralleled by a generous inclusivity: "For us, all dance forms are artistic, they all share the same language. Dance should show the extremes the human body can go to and then make you want to see more."

It is from this aesthetic that 2Faced have evolved to become one of the UK's most engaging, and unpredictable, companies. 2Faced have finally lived up to their inspiration in Janus, god of doorways, by settling in a liminal space that looks to their past and future, while presenting distinctive visions of what dance can do.