DANZ QUARTERLY No 2 December 2005

What’s on the Fringe in Edinburgh and Prague?
Dance In International Fringe Festivals

by Melanie Hamilton

Taking your work to international festivals is an invaluable experience. New Zealand is far away, and often our work carries references which overseas audiences find unfamiliar and challenging. Aside from the opportunities of selling your work and joining new touring circuits, taking your work overseas opens up fresh dialogue, ideas and criticisms about what it is you do.

I’ve recently toured to two international fringe festivals. The biggest one, the Edinburgh Fringe (www.edfringe.com) is a massive, heady event.

The scale of the festival is hard to describe – it is hugely expensive, commercially driven, and there is no guarantee of an audience, reviews or even interest in your work. The festival becomes a blur through which some groups surpass seemingly unsurmountable odds, unknowns become thrust in the spotlight and a vast number of international show sales are made. For these reasons, and the fact that there is an enormous party every night, means the annual August festival has its addicts. 

Dance is a minority art form at the festival – of the 1799 shows in the 2005 Fringe only 4% were dance. But this does not mean that dance is desperate for an audience, or going unnoticed. Dance may be the numbers underdog, but as far as audience interest and newspaper coverage goes it fares reasonably well (considering the huge competition for what is really very limited media coverage, the fact that the Scotsman newspaper has a dance reviewer is a great advantage).

The two main dance venues contribute a lot to this success. They both have distinct programming policies and meet different needs.  Both venues have a strong presence in the Fringe (unlike some of the ‘theatres’ that are really converted halls or even shipping containers), and each has a loyal audience. In a manner that doesn’t happen so much in New Zealand, audiences in Edinburgh often choose shows by the venue, not the artist, and this is especially true of dance and dance-theatre.  

This particularly applies to the Aurora Nova (www.auroranova.org), a well-respected, slightly out-of-the way venue that specialises in offering excellent, international dance-theatre work – and what they call “visual theatre”. Five Fringes old, the Aurora Nova more or less runs its own mini dance-theatre festival within the Fringe.

Shows here are mainly highly polished, well-marketed international works which have already toured, if not Europe, then extensively in their country of origin (which this year included Russia, Brazil and Italy).  Forget any perception of ‘fringe’ being on the edge in a poor way, most shows at this venue look like a million bucks. Not surprisingly, tickets at the Aurora Nova are more expensive than a lot of the other Fringe venues.

One of the shows I saw there, The Hospital, by 34 year old Norwegian choreographer Jo Strømgren (www.jskompani.no), is performed by three actors. They worked with Strømgren for a year, and the result was a dark and visually intriguing dance-theatre show - with the only spoken text being a gibberish language created by Strømgren.  The Aurora Nova’s 2005 programme is still online and worth looking at to get a snapshot of some of the dance-theatre currently touring European festivals. (DVD’s of The Hospital plus other works by this company are available to view at the Wellington DANZ office).

Dance Base, the National Centre for Dance in Scotland (www.dancebase.co.uk), is the other important dance venue in the Fringe. It might have one of the best dance studios in the world too - their massive Studio 1 has huge glass walls with prized views of the famous Edinburgh Castle.

At Dance Base there are a variety of reasonably priced daily workshops and classes, which this year included Improvisation with Janis Claxton, Hip Hop, Sensual Dance, Martial Arts, Ballet, Haka for Kids (with Mark J Hamilton formerly of Torotoro Maori Dance Company), contemporary dance and choreography workshops.

As well as being a hub for classes, workshops, seminars and dance films, the centre is also a performance venue offering a selection of mostly British contemporary dance, including works by Ashley Page, Rosie Kay Dance Company and The Curve Foundation.

There are of course many dance shows performed outside of these two venues, and I saw some great work in smaller theatres and tents.  But there were 26,995 performances in the 2005 Festival (that’s 870 per day) so shows of any genre, even amazing gems, were unfortunately incredibly easy to miss. 

The enormity of the Edinburgh Fringe has its positives – if your show quickly gets a good reputation people will flock to see it. The audience is dedicated, interested and pretty forgiving, and by the second week the place is full of talent scouts, producers and programmers looking to buy shows.  So, much can happen in a month.

However, it is impossible to stress how hard it can be to get your show noticed in such a massive market. Smaller festivals, however, with different focuses can be a good way to showcase your work to an international audience, without breaking the bank. It is also, ironically, often easier to meet other artists and increase your international networks at smaller festivals. There may be less people, but there is also less competition and more time to see each other’s work.

It was at this years’ Prague Fringe (www.praguefringe.com) that I saw the best dance show I have seen in a long time called Flathead! The Czech company, Vesele Skoky (which means Jolly Jumps), offered the most highly engaging, socially perceptive and challenging show I have seen in ages. The audience, including myself, was crying with appreciation and laughter, and the Czechs in the audience were especially hysterical, as the company had (apparently) perfectly captured a paranoia that underlies Prague society. Their odes to fighting, kleptomania and alcohol were performed with much tongue in cheek, but most of all they had an energy, confidence and joy in their work that was completely infectious.

It will always be a challenge for us to travel with our work, but it is a particularly fulfilling artistic and professional experience and one we must encourage each other to undertake.

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