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Fringe 2007 Reviews (80)
The Ballerina Who Loves B-Boyz
Skywalk
clubWEST
*****
Wow! Twenty-four hours later and I can still feel my heart beating!
This show is the best value for money on the Fringe. It's liberating;
it's uplifting; it's a celebration of the human body in action; it transforms
the audience from passivity into a crowd of clapping, shouting, whooping
participants in the syncopating rhythms of the dance.
The action is straightforward: a ballerina is interrupted while practising
by a cacophony in the street. It is a group of youths practising their
street-dancing. She and her two companions enter into a competition
with the youths in which their arabesques and pirouettes are met with
feisty rhythms, percussive feet, rippling spines, articulating hips
and gravity-defying acrobatics. It is an ecstatic and potent tumble
of movement from beginning to end, and naturally, the ballerina falls
in love with one of the B-Boys.
These performers are members of Seoul-based street-dance groups under
the umbrella of the International B-Boy Association. They have their
own theatre in the centre of the city where they transform audiences
of all ages and walks of life. Cultural exchange is the purpose of the
association, and they have facilitated some of the most amazing body-popping
and break dancing I have ever seen. The athleticism of these young people
is utterly stupendous. The comic relief universal. Their generosity
as performers excels anything I've seen on the Fringe this year.
After the show I stood at the bus stop and watched the crowds of happy
people pouring out of the theatre and along the road, all of them energized
by the evening's entertainment, all of them with light hearts and skipping
feet. I couldn't wipe the grin off my face. When it finishes in Edinburgh
the show is heading for London, so if you can't get a ticket here, get
on a train! You won't regret it!
Jackie Fletcher
Siren
Ray Lee
Out of the Blue Drill Hall
*****
Siren is an installation of remarkable conception and innovation.
It is also quite a remarkable experience. In the centre of a vast space,
lit only with lamps on the floor, twenty-nine tripods, ranging from
about 50cm to 3m in height, support metal cross-bars equipped with small
electronic oscillators, an array of wiring and tiny speakers. Two gentlemen
in heavy grey suits move from device to device with tiny screw-drivers
fine-tuning each with delicate precision and adjusting the sound emitted.
The cross-bars start to swivel on their supports at varying speeds until
the entire hall is resonating with a wonderful range of sounds.
The lights go down and in the darkness the tiny red beacons on the
ends of each swivelling bar flit through the air like so many bright
red fire-flies. It is utterly hypnotic and so marvellous to hear cascades
of chiming bells, an ethereal choir, fanfares and oboes and bagpipes
and concertinas and anything you can personally imagine created solely
from sound pulses. The sound is at one and the same time melodious and
dissonant, rhythmic and anarchic, soothing and liberating.
We were told before the start to walk about as much as we liked, and
each individual in the audience took the opportunity to test the variety
to be heard in different places as the sound pulses form different combinations
of sounds and rhythms. However, most of us seemed to be compelled to
stop in one special spot, special to each individual, and remain transfixed
by the experience. I found a spot where I suddenly felt incredibly happy
and started to smile. The combinations of sounds here at that moment
were uplifting and transcendent. I sat on the floor and grinned to myself,
feeling privileged to witness this bizarre event with all these other
people.
The sirens of ancient mythology were strange creatures in Homer's Odyssey
whose song so delighted the senses of passing sailors that they were
shipwrecked on the rocks surrounding the island. None could resist the
lure of the siren's unearthly voices. And this Siren is equally
as entrancing, as alluring as the creatures of myth. It is an unusual
treat, a feast of the unexpected. I'm sure that each person has their
own very private and individual experience, every moment feeling like
a new discovery, while feeling part of the whole, the compelling sonic
world.
Jackie Fletcher
Mile End
By Dan Rabellato, co-writers Lewis Hetherington and Emma Jowett
Analogue Productions
Pleasance Dome
****
If you know the future, can you change it? In this play from London-based
Analogue Productions, one man dreams of death while the other lives
in a waking nightmare; each can see the end of their adventures but
either misinterprets or doesn't understand the path to their final destination.
The design work done on the piece is most impressive, using black-clad
figures to move pieces of set and performers around the stage, creating
unseen malevolent presences at some times, at others simply facilitating
the movement of the story.
The company uses all their chosen elements well, from projection to
music to seamless shifting from scene to scene. The cumulative effect
is more than the sum of its parts, making for an engaging and exciting
hour of theatre.
Rachel Lynn Brody
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