Dance reviews: Birds With Skymirrors | Private Dancer | Blood, Sweat And Tears | Brazil! Brazil!

I always wonder what goes on in the minds of people who walk out of dance shows. A misogynistic stand-up is one thing, but why not just wait and see how the dance will go?

Especially dance like Lemi Ponifasio's Birds With Skymirrors, which ran for two nights at the International Festival last week. This is no Swan Lake, true, although a grainy image of a bird covered in oil is repeatedly projected on to a large screen. In fact Ponifasio's exquisite language of movement, inspired by his homeland of Samoa, bears no relationship to western dance at all.

Birds With Skymirrors, based on Ponifasio seeing seabirds fly with videotape stuck around their necks, may be challenging to our unschooled eyes. But it is beautiful, sensual and flawless in its execution. The people who left, and there were quite a few, seriously missed out.

The stage is dimly lit and our eyes become bigger as they adjust to the dark. Slowly we begin to understand what we're seeing. Dancers in tunics glide across the floor like swans, their feet working furiously beneath them, patting their body parts in perfect time. Male dancers undulate their shoulder blades until they look as though they could detach from their bodies like nubs of wings. Female dancers twirl balls on strings until they become a blur, their shimmering reflections in the shiny floor and mirrors behind them.

The pace is slow, almost meditative, and it's the only time I've watched dance, been fully engaged and yet felt my eyes closing. An extraordinary experience, in all senses.

Private Dancer - a site-specific piece by Janice Parker in the penthouse of the Point Hotel, commissioned as part of the London 2010 Cultural Olympiad - asks a lot from the audience too and gives it back in spades. Artist Richard Layzell beckons us into his creation: five cubicles, each containing a dancer and a chair that we may individually, if we're lucky, get invited to sit upon. Some of the dancers are disabled, some are able-bodied.

In one of the rooms I'm invited into, a disabled dancer sits on the floor, his wheelchair folded in the corner. We smile at each other for at least ten seconds before he begins his tumbling movement around the floor. Outside, people watch our exchange on video, projected on to the wall.

It's a fantastic idea, a generous invitation to look and learn. Dancers and audience members mill around together. We don't know who's who until someone starts dancing. There is no judgment, no voyeurism. The atmosphere is of peace and kindness.

There is too much queuing, waiting around and not being able to see what's going on, however. It needs finessing and slowing down but it is a work that deserves audiences, and then some.

Over at Zoo Roxy, Liv Lorent's Blood, Sweat And Tears is a masterclass in emotionally rich dance theatre.

Lorent, known here for her award-winning Luxuria for Scottish Dance Theatre, presents a duet exploring the impact on a couple of caring for a newborn. Each leap and tussle tells a story of love, fear, jealousy and exhaustion. The set is minimal: a crib, a bed and an hourglass hanging from the ceiling. Those first moments of a baby's life, the trickling sand reminds us, are precious and this is both a joy and a pressure.

Lorent's choreography is so lush and sensuous I could have done with more movement, but Blood, Sweat And Tears brilliantly tells a complex story through the simplicity of dance.

At Udderbelly's Pasture, this year's big, brash spectacle Brazil! Brazil! is whipping up a concoction of capoeira, football, live music, dance, keepie-uppie, singing and history.?I'm surprised the kitchen sink wasn't thrown in. It's all good Friday night fun and the young, macho troupe are deft at creating a party vibe. You'd struggle to count more back flips anywhere else on the Fringe.

But unlike the national football team, it's too messy, there isn't enough connection and it doesn't come together in the end. It's also too loud. Quite a few people had to leave because their children were upset and covering their ears. A walkout at a dance show that, for once, made sense. v

Brazil! Brazil! is at Udderbelly's Pasture, 6.55pm, until 30 August. All the other shows have now ended

This article was first published in Scotland on Sunday, 22 August, 2010b