Tim Cornwell: Talking, swimming and dancing with mum - activities to interest all ages

Dancing with your mother is something most of us would go out of our way to avoid, but two Edinburgh Fringe shows have mothers dancing on stage with real-life sons

The title of David Bolger's show is actually Swimming with My Mother and features Bolger, the 44-year-old Irish artistic director of CoisCim Dance Theatre, in a pas de deux with his mum - Madge Bolger, 77.

The production has played to full houses in Dublin and Paris and by Bolger's description, is not to be sneezed at.

His mother, a swimming teacher, taught him to swim at the age of two - just as she was taught to swim by her father at the age of three.

With a soundtrack ranging from Madge's Nat King Cole favourites to a series of interviews, the piece explores the wider theme of parents letting go.

Madge, not a professional performer, still teaches swimming to mother-and-baby classes. David became a tap dancer, ballet dancer and choreographer.

"What interests me as a choreographer was that when I was learning to swim as a child, swimming teachers would go to great lengths to lie on the poolside and do backstroke or breaststroke to try and demonstrate the resistance of water," he says. "I used that movement language as a basis for the piece."

"We bring a great deal of maturity to the stage. I tapdance in my bare feet, for her. For me it was a case of learning to slow down, in a way."

A Conversation with Carmel, meanwhile, dances in the other direction. Barrowland Ballet's artistic director Natasha Gilmore has devised a piece from conversations with her grandmother before she died, centred on an 80th birthday party.

The 82-year-old dancer Diana Payne-Myres plays Carmel. The guests include Gilmore dancing with her baby son Otis, poised to make his stage debut at eight months.

Gilmore found a freedom in her conversations with her grandmother which lead her to deplore "the depth of love, tensions, understanding, misunderstanding and frustrations inherent in family relationships" she says. Shows will also feature an ensemble of volunteer performers and original music by Shooglenifty bass player Quee Macarthur.

Migrating oases

Speaking of places to dance with your mother, for years the Club Bar at the Assembly Rooms was the Fringe watering-hole of choice, nicknamed "The Vortex" for its quality of sucking the unwary inexorably into its heady atmosphere.

With the Assembly Rooms closed this year, and the Assembly operation moved across town to George Square, which bars, private and public, will emerge as the places to be come August? It's not such a trival question: bar revenues are to major Fringe venues as popcorn sales are to cinemas.

In its wholesale move to the Southside, Assembly has relocated the Club Bar, promising a whole new look from an Edinburgh design firm, in a space in the David Hume Tower car park.Jeffrey's Interiors, a Stockbridge-based interior design company, have themed the bar on "distressed elegance". While it sounds like a look borrowed from Assembly veteran Simon Callow, perhaps, it will have lighting, wallpaper and furniture "reminiscent of the end of the Victorian era", says a spokeswoman: "We like to think it's the Fringe festival's equivalent of Soho's Groucho Club."

The Club Bar is limited to performers and guests but there are seven bars in all at the Assembly site at George Square, the rest of them public, including The Container Bar and the 3.2.1 Bar.

Major rivals for The Club Bar in the private category must include the Gilded Balloon's Loft Bar, where Gilded Balloon suprema Karen Koren and even her arch-rivals the Underbelly boys may be spotted clutching their mineral waters.

On the other side of town the Traverse is spreading its wings this year. From about 10pm on festival nights, its familiar bar and cafe will re-emerge as Late and Lounge, with lowered lighting, vintage lampshades, flying ducks and wally dugs. The goal is "a cosy space to talk with friends and enjoy retro snacks", like Pot Noodle, says a spokeswoman, "a place to escape to during the hectic nights of the Fringe".

In the West End, meanwhile, ReMarkable Arts is bidding for the later-night crowd with the cabaret offerings and bar in its new St George's West venue, open until 3am, while its smaller Hill Street Theatre bar is likely to retain its offbeat ambiance.

The Traverse is clearly ahead in the coffee stakes, however, thanks to a new kiosk supplied by Artisan Roast, which has long strived to produce Edinburgh's trendiest and tastiest cup of coffee from its Broughton Street base.

Fruits of the loom

My early vote for best festival artwork goes to the Kantha Diaries, a tapestry by senior Dovecot Studios weaver Naomi Robertson, spotted on a recent visit there. Inspired by Asian woodcut prints and a recent visit to India, its intricate blue designs run from trains to dancers and cockroaches. It appears in Heirloom, an exhibition staged by the Edinburgh International Festival in partnership with Dovecot as part of this year's Asian strand.