Assembly Hall, EIF Dance review – 'Disappointingly low on actual dancing'

Renée Sigouin in Assembly Hall | Pic: Michael Slobodian

Assembly Hall

Edinburgh Festival Theatre

★★★☆☆

Choreographer Crystal Pite returns to the Edinburgh International Festival with a weight of expectation, following her stunning work for Scottish Ballet (Emergence) in 2016. Assembly Hall, however, is quite a different prospect and in a year when the Festival only programmed three dance shows, disappointingly low on actual dancing.

Pite teamed up with regular collaborator, playwright Jonathon Young to create this 90-minute drama set in a local hall. So it comes as no surprise that the work is rooted in theatricality, characterisation and narrative. A gang of medieval battle re-enactors has reached crisis point `– should they disband or attempt to continue with dwindling funds and members? As with any community group, dominant personalities emerge and fight for their preferred outcome, only here the conflict morphs into actual battles complete with armour and swords.

This blurring of the boundaries between reality and fiction, past and present, gives rise to some truly beautiful tableaux, turning the stage into a work of visual art. When the cast (all of whom are supremely talented) move as one to re-frame the tableau, it’s aesthetically captivating, technically brilliant and very funny. In fact there are several moments of sharp humour here, thanks in part to the masterful lip-synching that marries the dancers’ movements to Young’s text. The exaggerated physical gestures Pite created for the performers, rendering each character larger than life, is also executed with precision.

Buried in amongst all this Arthurian drama, are a couple of pas de deux and the odd solo, but it’s hard to know what to do with them. Like scraps at a banquet table, we hungrily eat them up, unsure when our next meal will arrive. The re-enactors may be waging a war but so too is this production, and in the tug between storytelling, dancing, historical fantasy and individual desire, nobody is left holding the rope. 

Kelly Apter

Until 24 August

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