Feather Mammy

Four figures appear at the entrance to Dance Base. Strangely attired, they twitch and stumble, gradually making their way into the Grassmarket. They scatter green sand; they frighten a passing official; collect an audience as they round the streets; trip over cobbles and make their way towards the castle. Attracted by ragged music from a wayward xylophone, they climb the stairs. Welcome to Feather Mammy, Alex Rigg's typically eloquent live art puzzle.

Rigg's work seems to exist in a cultural vacuum. Despite the references to grafitti and butoh, it feels timeless. The costumes are amalgams of safety gear, camping equipment: the four Mammies could be travellers from another planet, or colourful migrants on an unknown journey. By the time they reach Dance Base's back garden - now convulsing to a vicious dub step - they might have found home, or extinction.

Feather Mammy is not vague, as every gesture, every lurch, builds the characters. It is, however, ambivalent, forcing the audience to look closely, think hard. It is a blank slate, a screen for the viewer to project a personal interpretation.

Because of this, it can be read through multiple filters. There is a connection to burlesque, with the emphasis on character and costume. It could be butoh, thanks to face paint and idiosyncratic patterns of movement. It could be contemporary dance, street theatre, busking. It relates to the endurance performances of live art. Nothing is fixed, only the inexorable progress of the four bodies and their mysterious attraction.

Perhaps alone in the Fringe, Feather Mammy draws in the punters even half way through the performance. Passers-by, fascinated by this perverse pilgrim's progress, follow the players back into the studio, paying at the door for a show that they have caught in the street. The finale, uncertain as everything else, sees Feather Mammy scratch at the doors of the dance studio, desperate to enter: a highly iconic image of the piece's own relationship to dance. It is outside the tradition, but scraping desperately to enter. That the characters fail, and fall at the door, does not echo an artistic failure. Rigg is slowly coming in from the wilderness, bringing back his secrets.