With over 3,000 shows running at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, deciding what to see is no small task. The Fringe boasts a line-up of familiar faces but also rising talent, with anything from theatre to circus and cabaret acts to spoken word and interactive performances. But above all, the Edinburgh Fringe provides a platform to test new ideas on a willing audience, especially work which blends boundaries between genres. Here are some thoughts on 5 interdisciplinary shows at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe.
Diana Salles’s I Killed a Man, presented by Quartier Libre Productions
Created in collaboration with director Firenza Guidi, this show by the Brazilian-born Diana Salles, draws on Salles’ own experience of transitioning from male to female. The performance opens with Salles welcoming the audience and thanking them for attending ‘the funeral’. It’s a moving introduction that leads into an impressive aerial sequence, where haunting choreography explores both death and transformation.
Soon, however, the funeral dress is discarded, making way for a sequence of vibrant costumes. The stage becomes a canvas for striking imagery through expressive movement. The piece journeys through a spectrum of emotions – pain, pride, strength, triumph and shame – each given space to resonate. Blending aerial work, dance, song and physical theatre, the show is an ambitious multidisciplinary work that succeeds because every element feels purposeful. Aerial performance becomes at times a symbol of celebration, at others of suffering. Spoken word invites us directly into Salles’ story, bridging the gap between spectacle and intimacy.
I Killed A Man is not only a portrait of being transgender but a meditation on being human. Salles closes with a powerful reflection: to be human is to exist in constant transition, always building and growing toward a truer sense of self.
Isaiah Wilson’s Score
The appeal of this dance and movement work by the Luxembourg-based artist Isaiah Wilson is in its use of Electric Muscle Stimulation (EMS) technology, sending computer-coded impulses through the performers’ bodies to produce involuntary movements. Offstage, a MIDI piano propels the choreography, each note triggering a jolt that physically controls the dancers.
The use of EMS meditates on the complex relationship between the human body and the machines that increasingly shape our lives. Wilson’s performance investigates questions of automation, control and the blurred line between human agency and technological innovation. It’s a theme that feels simultaneously urgent and uncomfortably close to our present. And it’s definitely unnerving, seeing bodies controlled by invisible forces.
The result is often a dystopian, and at times deeply powerful, piece, particularly when the audience is reminded that these movements require little conscious input from the performers on stage. But at just 30 minutes, the piece occasionally struggles to establish a cohesive narrative thread to bring together its choreography. Additionally, I found myself wishing the ‘controller’ was on stage too, alongside the ‘controlled,’ a choice that might have amplified the eerie resonance of unseen systems shaping our technological future. Still, the performance leaves a lingering reminder that dystopian visions are not distant fictions, but emerging realities.
Nick Nikolaou’s Anatomy of a Night
From the Ireland-based contemporary dance and queer artist Nick Nikolaou, this piece blends party with dance-theatre, celebrating queer clubs and spaces, as well as the formative experiences that have shaped Nikolaou’s memories of them. Across the performance, we encounter familiar figures and moments: a drunk girl having a sad night out, the ritual of getting ready, the haze of a dingy techno club.
Each vignette stands apart but simultaneously remains connected, brought together through movement and costume. The wardrobe alone is dazzling, presenting us with a parade of club looks, while expressive lighting matches the vibrancy of Nikolaou’s choreography. What comes through most is the performer’s confidence: expression, passion and tenderness pulse throughout.
Though a solo work, Anatomy of a Night captures the collective spirit of queer nightlife, evoking cabaret and drag traditions with extraordinary depth for a single performer. If there is a limitation, it is the balance of audience participation. With a soundtrack of irresistible club anthems and its form, you feel the urge to get up and dance, but permission is not quite granted.
Darkfield’s Eulogy
Eulogy from Darkfield, the company behind a series of immersive 360- degree audio experiences, takes you on a strange, dreamlike trip through a hotel that exists only in your mind. You don’t know how you got there or why, but you’ll need the pamphlet to find your way. It unfolds inside a purpose-built shipping container, with your ‘suite’ nothing more than a laundry cage and the entire experience taking place in total darkness. The 360- degree binaural sound does all the work, filling the void with vivid, unsettling detail. Footsteps echo as if people are moving around you, characters whisper directly in your ear, the lift rumbles beneath you and at one point it almost feels as though you can feel the heat of fire.
The sound design is so convincing that your imagination quickly takes over. The narrative itself is fragmented, but that disjointedness does increase the sense of mystery. It may not be for everyone, with the combination of complete darkness and claustrophobic confinement of the cage. However, for those willing to try, Eulogy is a surprisingly fun descent into the surreal.
Emergency Chorus’s Ways of Knowing
An abstract dance piece blending choreography, found text and live sound, Ways of Knowing, from duo Emergency Chorus, sets out to interrogate our relationship with the future. Structured in two parts, the first half focuses on the weather, with the character of a Victorian eccentric who believes his invention, twelve leeches in a jar, can predict tomorrow’s skies. The second transports us to a cave system, where we meet Peter the Hermit, a supposed clairvoyant.
On paper, Ways of Knowing promises an exploration of timely themes. With climate change an important global topic, and political divisions deepening over how to respond, the piece seems ready to engage with these urgent questions. In practice, however, the performance falls short. The movement was badly executed, the narrative structure weak and the sound design, though creative, served more as an accessory than an integral tool.
While the duo’s use of devising process did encourage moments of inventiveness, the result is an inaccessible performance that confuses more than it engages. The arts can and should tackle issues as vital as our environmental future, but such work also needs to remain understandable by a wider audience, not a select few.