I'm sorry I've kept you, my walk has become rather sillier these days.

Last year the Edinburgh Spotlight Best Comedy Show went to two men who have been dancers for most of their professional lives. Their company, New Art Club, fuses dance and comedy. But this isn't the “side-splitting” (read: predictable) comedy we see recycled on television: it's a funny and intelligent engagement with the audience through movement (and sometimes a bit of speech).

This isn't a new concept. The combination of movement and humour exists as an established tradition through physical comedy - think Charlie Chaplin, Monty Python, or even the traditional circus clown. We could even argue that Python's Ministry of Silly Walks is essentially a dance. Choreography is used to induce laughter. The audience are amused by the absurdity of the hopelessly inefficient movements, where something so simple as carrying a cup of coffee becomes farcical. Recent dance from companies such as New Art Club, which set out to amuse their audience, follows in these traditions of physical comedy, but also finds footing in modern dance theory.

Dance and performance theorist Andre Lepecki talks about the concept of 'The Betrayal' in recent contemporary European dance. This betrayal is often attributed to a rejection of the established conventions of in so-called minimal choreography,

Conceptual dance is nothing more than an inexcusable betrayal, because it is a self-betrayal: the betrayal of dance's very essence and nature, the betrayal of dance's signature, of its privileged domain. That is: the betrayal of movement. In many instances of this accusation the demand placed before the work is just one: dance!

Andre Lepecki, Exhausting Dance: Themes for a politics of movement, in Live: Art and Performance

This betrayal only rings true if we agree that dance is, and always must be, linked to movement - the sort of crowd-pleasing movement typical in dance: established steps and rhythmic timing.

It seems to me that the most interesting and original dance at the moment is therefore guilty of this 'betrayal.' Lepecki argues that dance which questions what movement is, who the choreographer is, and even what dance is, leads an audience from the theatre to much more interesting theoretical grounds. Dance audiences today may find themselves in an art gallery, or perhaps, a comedy club. This so-called betrayal can lead to more humorous engagement with movement as both a physical entity and as a concept. By stripping back dance to what are described as 'everyday movements' (pulled from the repertoire of movements we as humans perform), performers are creating shows where perhaps being funny isn't the end goal, but a welcome side effect. Where the audience expects a big lavish movement, and is presented with, for example simply a dancer sitting down, the juxtaposition of what we expect and what we are given is funny.

We see this trend echoed through the dance pages of this year's Fringe brochure, with acts such as New Art Club, Ultimate Dancer, Maud Liardon and The Ballet Ruse all advertising as both dance (or physical theatre) and comedy.

Autobiographical self-mockery is a staple of stand-up tradition, and is a tact that has translated into dance performance. Maud Liardon's Arnica 9CH and The Ballet Ruse started with their own experiences of dance and being a dancer. The Ballet Ruse decided early on that if they 'were to be in a studio for eight hours a day together that [they] were going to have a laugh.' This certainly has translated in their public performance. In a promo made for the Dublin Fringe they danced gracefully at a fountain with what looked like ribbons, all to the emotive score of Swan Lake. In fact, the ribbons turn out to be rolls of toilet paper and the clip ends with them eating it.

In a similar vein sits New Art Club, who use their time in the studio improvising "until one of us does something that we like or makes the other one laugh and then we develop that. Sometimes simply the act of moving in a certain way can be funny."

Juxtaposing live dance with speech, text or film also often adds humorous narrative to performance. New Art Club write in the same way as they choreograph, by improvising text alongside movement. They aren't using text to parody or belittle the movement, it's simply another element that enhances the show.

In these comedy/dance combinations there seems to be a real interest not only in dance theory, but also in the wider cultural arena dance currently sits in. Ultimate Dancer's show This is Not Dance references Magritte's This Is not a Pipe. Ultimate Dancer says she is interested "in what happens with the spectator and its expectations when we say it is not what we expect it to be."

Humour, it seems, is born out of a state of unease. This isn't simply a frivolous attempt to gain laughs, Ultimate Dancer also engages with post-modern dance history and has spent two years considering questions of authorship and originality. "I don't know why dance is still so pre-occupied with producing something beautiful," she asks. Ultimate Dancer stomps around the stage, moving in ways that sit somewhere between the pedestrian everyday aesthetic of the Judson Church dancers and the attention-seeking rawness of a toddler. Or she crouches down, spits on the floor, and rubs out some chalk writing. The audience is offered a chance to see how normal movement is made absurd by simply being on-stage.

Returning to the Python example, the audience knows how humans walk. When presented with something that deviates from this, we are surprised and amused by the absurdity. With Ultimate Dancer, an audience knows what it expects from a dance performance, and when this expectation is quashed we have a similar reaction of surprise and amusement.