Dance, physical theatre and circus review: Learning from the Future, Dance Base, Edinburgh

It takes a while for this show to fully bed in, due to a stop/start opening prolonging that crucial connection between audience and performer.

A scary, hopefully not prescient, view of a life ruled by outside forces

Learning from the Future, Dance Base (22) * * *

Once it gets going, however, Learning from the Future has a compelling quality.

Choreographer Colette Sadler spent a considerable amount of time exploring the notion of a post-human future before making the piece. A time when our bodies are no longer of use, replaced by cyborgs able to receive data far more easily than us.

As such, we start with a naked figure looking curious next to a digital screen stating ‘I was a body’ (note not ‘somebody’ just ‘a body’ – there are no feelings at play here).

Once her bare skin has been covered in a science fiction-style cat suit, talented dancer Leah Marojevic begins to move.

Nothing she does seems to stem from her own desire – each roll of the torso or sharp slice of the arm appears to be the result of somebody else’s input. Which is, of course, true because these are Sadler’s movements – but there’s more to it than that.

This is a scary, hopefully not prescient, view of a life ruled by outside forces where human emotion has no home.

Until 24 August

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