Legitimate Fun

Legitimate Bodies were the surprise comedy hit of Dance Base 2008. Contact improvisation explained the Irish Peace Process in an accessible and hilarious introduction to both. Their new piece, The Goldilocks Zone, is a genuine all-ages show in which Damien Punch and Nick Bryson emerge as Irish astronauts imbued with the essence of Irish kids TV presenters. "It is a kind of glam rock eurotrash feel, but of course more profound. We are contemporary dancers, after all,” Bryson explains.

Bryson and Punch consciously court a wide audience. “We use comedy to reach the audience,” Bryson clarifies. “Contemporary dance is so cool and this work is somehow off the radar.”

This time, despite a fanciful surmise – “We are representatives of mankind expressly trying to communicate with aliens and command an important spaceship that the audience is on too,” explains Bryson – science gets the Legitimate Bodies Dance Company treatment.

“The Goldilocks Zone is an astronomical term for an inhabitable region around a distant star and it would take 36,000 years for us to get there. The NASA Kepler Mission has just discovered there may be 100 million habitable planets out there. This is real.”

Despite the seriousness of the theme, LBDC are a prime Fringe experience: joyous and fun, creating entertainment from tough ideas. “Our work fits within the dance world in a way by opening outwards to other forms of theatre and mixing it together,” says Punch. This, adds Bryson, is “why it works in festivals such as The Edinburgh Fringe.”