Fringe Benefits: Signs of Strength, Signs of Shortage

Much of the work presented at this year’s Fringe does not draw clear boundaries between art forms and dance styles. Often, dance can equally be classed as physical theatre, and this physicality in turn extended to drama and music.

At the Traverse Theatre, the line-up was the first to be programmed by Dominic Hill, who joined as artistic director in 2007, having worked for five years as co-artistic director at Dundee Rep, home of Scottish Dance Theatre. While the Traverse does put on dance throughout the year - in association with Dance Base - as Scotland’s New Writing Theatre, it doesn’t normally work dance into its August schedule. Perhaps influenced by his time at Dundee Rep, Hill’s programme was more physical than is usual for the Traverse at this time of year, encompassing not just new writing but dance, music, and physical theatre.

David Hughes’ and Al Seed’s The Red Room, which premiered in June 2008 at the Traverse, returned for a week-long run, winning a Herald Little Devil award. This piece encompassed speech and could be described as physical theatre: today’s theatre frequently blurs the boundaries between disciplines, and the Traverse under Hill’s direction isn’t only about new writing but about new theatre, whether spoken, sung, mimed or danced.

While The Red Room was the only true dance piece on the programme, a significant proportion of the programme was cross-disciplinary and several works used the body as a vehicle for expression. David Greig and Gordon McIntyre’s Midsummer, described as a ‘lo-fi indie musical’, and Gloria Deluxe’s contemporary operetta Accidental Nostalgia, are both highly physical works, more so than some works which claim to be dance or physical theatre. The Red Room marries contemporary and baroque dance with urban dance, to explore Edgar Allan Poe’s short story The Masque of the Red Death. It brings up questions about the relationship of written text to dance – thus making this, as a reworking of a literary text, a perfectly legitimate piece of work to include on the programme of a new writing theatr

Al Seed is also credited with input into Watch It!, a self-choreographed solo for Tony Mills of Room2Manouvre which combines speech, media, contemporary, hip-hop and breakdance. At Zoo, Rannell Theatre Company presented Everything happens on the break. While David Hughes Dance and Mills’ Room2Manouevre blended together different disciplines into a seamless whole, Rannell chose to use scripted drama as a clunky platform for displaying their dance and musical skills. It was well-received by audience and critics but didn’t maximise its potential to combine different disciplines to create something new and unique. Nevertheless, it contributed to a trend for urban dance to have a pivotal role in the construction of narrative, theatrical work. Given urban dance’s street origins, this theatricality is interesting, and however successful experiments are, it is laudable that attempts are made to create something new.

The origins of ballet are far removed from those of street dance, and ballet was scarce at the Fringe. The only company to perform a classical piece was a pre-professional company, Burklyn Youth Ballet. There were, however, two contemporary ballet companies, and again we can see blurred boundaries between disciplines.

It is debatable whether ‘contemporary ballet’ is a blending of contemporary dance and ballet, or simply ballet’s current state. Moreover, contemporary dance developed as a reaction against ballet, but didn’t discard all of its elements, and today this reaction has lost some of its vehemence, so given their shared background, and the way their choreographic paths converge, it is difficult and futile to draw a clear line between them.

Two contemporary ballet companies stood out: Nottingham Youth Dance, and Collisions Dance. NYD is affiliated with Nottingham’s New English Contemporary Ballet and it will be interesting in a few years’ time to see what emerges from this collaboration.

At Zoo, Collisions Dance performed Myriad, a piece for three dancers, including emerging young choreographer David Beer who, when not performing or looking after his two dancers, is out on the streets flyering. We need more developing, independent choreographers to bring ballet to Edinburgh in August. The Fringe is about experimentation, and ballet has a staid image which it needs to shake off.

Ballet can be just as experimental as any other form of dance, but it has yet to prove that to the majority of the theatregoing public. Because of its dependence on government funding, and the subsequent need to justify this with ticket sales, ballet suffers from a lack of opportunity for experimentation. Consequently, in ballet companies choreographic talent can languish, undernourished and underdeveloped.

The Edinburgh Fringe is the ideal environment for this talent to ripen: it isn’t only choreographers who can be developed here, but audiences. More than any other time of year, in August the public buys tickets with an open mind. When ballet critics and audiences frequently complain that there isn’t enough new choreography, it is a shame that upcoming classical choreographers aren’t seizing the opportunities offered by the Fringe – opportunities to try out new work, and to fail.

It is frustrating to see other dance forms and art forms develop here, while ballet takes a back seat. Happily, there are a few companies bringing ballet to Edinburgh, and dance styles continue to merge, and to flourish because of this merging.