Fringe dance & physical theatre reviews: Show Pony | The Weight of Shadow | The Flock and Moving Cloud + more

Show Pony ★★★★

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 26 August 

When your entire career is based on an ability to move quickly and flexibly, what happens when your body is no longer willing to play the game? It’s a dilemma that faces many people reliant on a strong physique to earn a living, and for circus artists in particular.

Audiences are looking for the ‘wow factor’, and if you can’t deliver it, who’s going to employ you? Romy Seibt, Lena Ries and Anke van Engelshoven of Berlin-based circus collective still hungry have come up with a solution - make your own work.

Co-created with performance artist Bryony Kimmings, Show Pony is a funny, emotionally rich look at the 'before and after' of circus performers. The ‘before’ is of particular interest, because as audience members all we ever see are the fully trained, smiling artists jumping and twirling as if their body knows no limits.

As they say in the show, it has to look ‘effortless’ despite the hard work that goes into it. Sharing photographs of their younger selves, the three women chart their journeys from (often unhappy) family home, to living their dream on the road with a circus troupe.

The ‘after’ is not quite upon them yet, but at the ages of 39, 45 and 50, it’s not far away. Donning grey wigs, they imagine what the future holds for them as performers and friends. For now, however, they’ve still got the goods as demonstrated by the grace, agility (and yes, effortlessness) of their aerial work on silks and rope, and flexibility of their contortion.

Yet as fun as these are to watch, that’s not the heart of this story. It’s the wit and wisdom with which they take us inside circus life, for women in particular, peeling back the sequins to reveal the human beings beneath.

Kelly Apter

The Weight of Shadow ★★★★

Assembly Checkpoint (Venue 322) until 25 August

Sasha Krohn is a powerful performer whose body seems filled with weights, as he tries, struggles, fails and tries again to simply stand up.

With the muscular contours of his bare arms, legs and chest accentuated in the green gloom of the half-lit room, he looks physically strong and yet his tendons, ligaments and bones seem to have stopped working, bowing and breaking as he twists, spins and slips across the stage. 

It’s a striking embodied metaphor for how the appearance of strength doesn’t always mean a person behind it is strong - one that is inspired by Krohn’s partner, artist Cíana Fitzgerald’s real-life struggles with depression, anxiety and PTSD.

However, as a shaven headed everyman, in his cargo trousers and industrial workwear, with the sounds of what could be a factory in the distance, he becomes a representation of a universal human struggle; to literally pull oneself up, on and out when the body wants to do the opposite. 

With the grinding, crunching rhythms of the day interspersed with more organic matter, this is a man who also seems trapped in a human production line of never-ending labour. Everything is against him from the clothes he wears to the small-turned-monumental routines that he must carry out.

As he tries to move forwards, his feet move him back, but still he perseveres, fails, perseveres and eventually succeeds, only to be rewarded by having to face another task.  

Uneasy in every moment, his dynamic shapes he makes feel uncomfortable despite their power and, when he finally comes home to sleep, a new kind of challenge arrives; that of his nightmarish dreams, in which Krohn, who is also an aerial artist, spins through space, his face frozen, scared, in the light of a torch.

When he awakes, the day starts again, but as the light changes, perhaps it’s a little easier than the one before. 

Sally Stott

The Flock and Moving Cloud ★★★★

Zoo Southside (Venue 82) until 25 August

Standing in a triangle formation, arms swooping up and down, it’s as if the performers in Scottish Dance Theatre are migrating south. It’s also a striking opening image for this athletic double-bill, and one which builds in speed and intensity.

By the time they stop, and collapse to the floor, we can almost feel their lungs pounding. 

Choreographed by Roser López Espinosa, The Flock may be inspired by birds but it encapsulates the camaraderie and support of any group or team. As they gradually come to their feet after that first endeavour, the dancers lift, move and carry each other in a bid to revive their companions.

Acting almost like a circus troupe, they climb on shoulders and become human swings. Splitting off into smaller groups, the dancers continue their birdlike swoops and turns, combined with floor-based work to echo the shift between land and sky.

If the constant display of energy in The Flock makes you feel tired just watching it, Moving Cloud comes along to steady the pace.

No less busy or dynamic, but with an almost laid-back swagger, this lively piece by Sofia Nappi is like seeing music in motion. Set to a score of Scottish folk music by Donald Shaw and TRIP, the fiddles and drums invigorate the whole room (audience and performers alike).

As the infectious beat inhabits their bodies, the dancers bend and sway, arms billowing in baggy white shirts and kilt-like skirts. 

At times it’s like watching a whiskey-fuelled Highland lock-in, at other moments it’s as if each individual is locked inside their own head, conjuring up the spirt of ancestors past.

Throughout, there’s a sense of joy and celebration, but also of slow and steady propulsion as these exuberant ‘clouds’ blow in and out of our lives. 

Kelly Apter

Tennis ★★★

ZOO Southside (Venue 82) until 25 August

Jannik Elkær and Kristoffer Louis Andrup play tennis rivals Björn Borg and John McEnroe, warming up with their hair, headbands and increasingly small shorts for both the Wimbledon 1980 final and this show.

It’s the similarities between these two kinds of ‘performance’ that this fun, largely silent and consistently silly show delights in exploring.  

Tennis is a dance. Theatre is a match. At the Fringe, it’s certainly a competitive sport. The bounce of the ball sets the rhythm, as the two men jog around the stage like bulky ballerinas, movements made heightened which, pushed beyond to their limits, transform into a fight, a farce, a tango.

A court battle soon becomes a literal one, where balls now bounce like bullets and a reference to Alien is as likely as aerobics or Aerosmith. 

A clown comedy, with different routines structured like games, it struggles to come together into a full match as dramatic as the one it’s based on. As theatre it needs more structure, as dance it needs more polish.

Still, as they say at the end, “If you didn’t like it, work on your own game.” It may not be a decade-defining moment, but it’s an entertaining, easy-to-watch hour, which many in the cheering audience are delighted by.   

Sally Stott 

The Hidden Garden ★★

Summerhall (Venue 26) until 26 August

Jill Crovisier is an award-winning dancer from Luxembourg, who clearly has the skill and talent required to hold up a solo show. Quite what she is trying to convey in The Hidden Garden (which she also choreographed) is anyone’s guess, however.

On a square of artificial grass, she throws flowers, reclines in the sunshine wearing dark shades, and disappears underneath the garden itself.

All of it feels deeply personal, none of it reaches out to the audience, and despite being inspired by ‘society’s normalised customs’, it’s as if Crovisier hasn’t considered the actual society (us) that will be watching her.

Kelly Apter