Review > Dance reviews: Four Quarters | The Red Room | RAW | ME (Mobile/Evolution)
'The Red Room is a decadent piece of dance-theatre.' Picture: Jane Barlow
IF THERE is a rising star of contemporary dance at the Fringe, it is Isobel Cohen.
Currently dancing her heart out for small but adoring audiences at The Zoo's Monkey House in her company Helix Dance's Four Quarters, she is a genuinely exciting talent, a performance artist in the proper sense of the word who deserves to have Arts Council budgets thrown at her. She is also very funny, which can't be said for many contemporary dancers.
Of the four short pieces curated by her Cambridge-based company, three feature Cohen and all are excellent. This show is not flawless – it's too low-fi for that – but it earns its stripes with cutting-edge choreography, Fringe spirit, and the elation I felt after I walked out.
The Great Escape, a laugh-out-loud solo, opens with Cohen dressed in a dire PVC corset, Bridget Jones pants and kneepads, telling us the story behind her get-up and then performing a parodic piece of conceptual dance that segues into the real deal. It's a beautiful, assured performance and Cohen's choreography is slick and charged, her body at one moment undulating and the next shot through with electricity.
Next up is a solo by a female dancer in jeans and vest who slides off a chair in the audience to writhe in front of a no-budget film and a soundtrack that includes Will Mason, Sparklehorse and Rameau. All Ends In Tears is a farcical duet using a sofa and beanbag, the dancers throwing themselves on cushions, pillow-fighting and scrambling up the pillars of the venue. I've Been Waiting is an exhilarating courtship through dance with a soundtrack by indie singer Fink. In the opener, Cohen joked about paltry Fringe audiences for contemporary dance. I have a feeling she'll have to write that one out of her repertoire soon.
It's great to see dance on the Traverse Fringe programme for the first time. The Red Room is a decadent, Bacchanalian piece of dance-theatre based on Edgar Allan Poe's Masque Of The Red Death, which at times opens the door into the strange, disturbed Red Room of David Lynch's cult Twin Peaks.
A revisited collaboration between David Hughes, one of Britain's greatest dancers, and Glasgow's own Al Seed – who performs brilliantly in place of Seeta Patel for this Fringe run – it's a wonderfully rude affair with plenty of humping, jesting, grotesquerie, and some gorgeous courtly-meets-contemporary dance. My only criticism is that Poe's tale was too deeply buried under all the carrying on, but it was so engaging I barely noticed.
Dance is springing up in new and unexpected places all over the Fringe this year. Halfway down Leith Walk at the Out of the Blue Drill Hall, a Fringe community has popped up and there's a genuine buzz about the place. RAW, by Ireland's leading aerial dance troupe, Fidget Feet, is a thrilling ticket to clubland, opening with four dancers bouncing to the beats while they queue, and a DJ playing house music from on high. There are neon lights, ropes snaking down, and the atmosphere induces the jitters you feel before a big night out.
The dancers pump their bodies, popping and punching the air in a jumpy choreography that's come straight from the dancefloor. There is male pole dancing and women thrown up poles suspended on harnesses. An amusing martial arts face-off between the female aerialists is a little dated, as are the tail-coated costumes, but watching the dancers casually walk up ropes dangling from the rafters, sans harnesses, is astonishing. There is too much narrative, which isn't needed with such jawdropping spectacle, but if you fancy a night out clubbing on the Fringe, this is the show to get you in the mood.
Claire Cunningham is an engaging performer who dances on crutches. Her show, Mobile/Evolution, tells her incredible story, mixing monologue with dance. Entering a stage strewn with crutches like sticks on a forest floor, we hear the clack of her coming before she appears like a walking tripod. Cunningham talks us through her crutches and makes sculptures out of them, swaying mobiles of devices that both permit and restrict mobility.
The way she dances with her crutches, strapping them around her ankles and taking one in each hand, is wonderfully graceful. Supported by them, she dances en pointe and suspends her body from the floor. This is a moving, understated show that makes you think about disability in the most unsentimental way. Above all, when you discover Cunningham only started dancing in 2005, it's a show about the capacity of this most physical of artforms to heal the body.
Four Quarters, Helix Dance, Zoo Monkey House, until 23 Aug, 1.45pm; The Red Room, David Hughes Dance, Traverse, run ended; RAW, Fidget Feet, Dance Base @ Out of the Blue Drill Hall, until 27 Aug, various times; ME (Mobile/Evolution), Claire Cunningham, Dance Base @Out of the Blue Drill Hall, until 27 Aug, 7.15pm
