Dance Base and Assembly announce 2024 Edinburgh Festival Fringe Programme
- Dance Base Festival 24 in partnership with Assembly Festival will present the landmark venue’s 23rd festival programme, welcoming dance companies across the globe to Edinburgh, as well as showcasing home-grown talent and giving a stage to some of Scotland’s most exciting dancers and choreographers at the world’s biggest arts festival.
- The unique partnership between Dance Base and Assembly Festival, now in its second year, combines Dance Base’s expertise in dance curation with Assembly’s expertise in delivering a world-renowned festival programme.
- The 2024 programme is the first full programme curated under the tenure of Dance Base Artistic Director Tony Mills.
- 33 companies from 16 countries will present 274 performances of 29 dance and physical theatre shows exploring, celebrating, and questioning the human experience with all its challenges and joys.
- New for 2024, Dance Base introduce Fringe Fragments, a new pitching platform showcasing dance talent from around the world, bridging the gap between public event and industry showcase.
- Dance Base will continue to help dance flourish and change lives in the Scottish capital with public classes taking place in August for regulars and visitors alike.
- Tickets are now on sale at dancebase.co.uk & assemblyfestival.com
Dance Base, Scotland’s National Centre for Dance, is thrilled to announce its 2024 Edinburgh Festival Fringe Programme. Delivered in a unique partnership with Assembly Festival, the 2024 programme will present 274 performances of 29 shows from 33 companies in the home of dance at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
This multi-genre showcase celebrates, interrogates and shares different perspectives on shared human experiences in all their joys and challenges, bringing important themes to centre-stage including ageing, sexuality, gender, societal expectations of bodies, the climate crisis and more.
The unique partnership marries Dance Base and Assembly’s commitment to building strong relationships with some of the world’s most daring and innovative artists and dance companies, andthis year’s programme welcomes performers from across the globe, as well as providing a continued platform to nurture local talent.
Dancers and choreographers from countries and territories including Australia, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Belgium, Denmark, and Germany will arrive in Edinburgh this August to share their dance talent on the world’s biggest stage.
The venue will also host some of the most exciting professionals working in Scotland today including Charlotte Mclean, Matthew Hawkins, Alan Greig, Bridie Gane and Rob Heaslip.
Dance Base is proud to support dancers at every stage in their career no matter their age, and this year’s programme features emerging stars aged 10 to 80+. International rising stars such as Lewis Major and Jessie Thompson will be performing in the venue, as well asDance Base’s own Christine Thynne, who is set to make her solo debut at the age of 81.
This is the first full programme to be curated under the tenure of Dance Base Artistic Director Tony Mills, who assumed the role in 2021 succeeding Morag Deyes MBE.
This year’s programme champions and challenges, inviting a diverse range of performers to take centre-stage and share their perspective and their practice with audiences from around the globe.
With the return of the Industry Hub and the introduction of new pitching platform Fringe Fragments, the programme also reflects Dance Base’s desire to strengthen the sustainability of the Fringe for both performers and venues, creating a space where arts professionals can forge new relationships and strengthen lasting ones.
Artistic Director of Dance Base, Tony Mills, said: “I am beyond happy to present to you our festival programme for 2024. It has been a huge privilege to meet and see artists at home and abroad and have the chance to bring the world to Dance Base once more.
“This year, we will be hosting emerging to established artists from 16 countries, each sharing their own perspective on different and similar topics and aesthetics. It is my hope that you might just encounter those different perspectives as they co-exist in our programme.
“Making that possible is something I think cultural spaces should do.
“This year’s programme has been a massive team effort between Dance Base and Assembly Festival and we are grateful for their partnership and support to make this programme happen in what are difficult times.
“I wish to make our festival platform more of a launch pad for Scottish artists, leverage more industry activity for partners and artists, build more relationships to secure routes for artists to our platform and create an exciting and diverse programme of thoughtful, provoking and entertaining dance from around the world.”
Artistic Director of Assembly Festival, William Burdett-Coutts said: “We are proud to be partnering once again with Dance Base for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2024. Assembly and Dance Base hold a shared global outlook which is reflected in the diverse programme curated by Tony Mills.
“We delighted to support them in this endeavour and to welcome all the artists performing this summer into the Assembly programme.”
PROGRAMME HIGHLIGHTS
Presented by House of Oz, rising star of Australian dance, choreographer-director Lewis Major, is set to bring two UK premieres to this year’s Fringe. In a unique collaboration between Lewis, his company, and his mentor “Britain’s leading modern dance creator” (The Daily Express), the legendary Russell Maliphant OBE, Triptychis a captivating evening of dance, of connection between internal and external worlds – of non-duality – all set within a whirling maelstrom of movement, sound and light.
Experience a show like none other in Lewis Major’s intimate and moving Lien. In this extraordinary exchange, one audience member and one dancer come together on an otherwise empty stage for a singular ten-minute encounter that will never be repeated. Lien reimagines shared performance as a deeply personal, spiritual event. With limited performance slots, Lien is the hot ticket at this year’s Fringe!
Drumming to her own beat, up and coming Irish artist Jessie Thompson makes her Fringe solo debut with the world premiere of CRAWLER. Collaborating with street performer Jason McNamara, they mix adrenaline, mind-stretching sound and extreme physicality to embark on a journey of chaos, calm and collaborative climax. This euphoric mix of dance, drums and electronic music conceived through improvisation will be moving audiences between 2 and 11 August.
In its UK premiere after debuting at Dublin Dance Festival, Mufutau Yusuf presents Impasse, a powerful work featuring two performers which attempts to understand the politics of the black body in a contemporary western society. By challenging the historical racial projections of blackness – its crudeness, threat, sexuality, rage and immorality – the performance unveils its power, grace, sensuality, tenderness, intelligence and love.
Dutch performers Charles Pas and Courtney May Robertson bring two explosive but intimate physical poems to this year’s programme: Victory Boogie Woogie andthe pleasure of stepping off a horse when it’s moving at full speed. Desires and fears collide in an attempt to embrace the contradictions that make up a multifaceted human in this exhilarating double bill which will be providing late-night entertainment for audiences from 13 to 25 August.
SCOTLAND AND BEYOND
Scotland-based dance artists Rudy Mbunzama and Laura Mathana & Chinyanta Kabaso present a double bill exploring African history, culture, and artistry in King Bantu & Stories From The South. Created and performed by Rudy Mbunzama, King Bantu follows a young Congolese prince from the Musakata Tribe who was born with extraordinary powers unknown to him. Early-career artists Laura Mathana & Chinyanta Kabaso weave dance and spoken word to illuminate the history of African migration and colonisation in the exciting duet Stories From the South.
Bringing old traditions into new places and a new time, Rob Heaslip’sMan & Board features the unlikely pairing of Rob’s moving body with a ritualised wooden board with which he sings, he dances, he wins, and he loses. This is an impassioned and moving show about tradition, heritage, and masculinity where a gay father celebrates his own Irish cultural heritage as he passes it on to his son.
In shows for younger audiences, Scotland’s longest running children’s theatre company Catherine Wheels is set to present The Last Forecast, their first ever dance piece. Created and choreographed by the incredibly stylish Bridie Gane, the show is set on an island where Gael, a gecko-like creature lives alone, in harmony with the surroundings, until a stranger arrives, disturbing this island sanctuary…
ARTISTS OF ALL AGES
In a sensitive and rich performance piece making its world premiere and Dance Base this August, Robbie Synge – aged 44, and Edinburgh-born Alfie aged 10, explore the question of what it is to be a man today through dance and play in The Show for Young Men. Directed by Eoin McKenzie, this is a funny and tender new contemporary dance performance for audiences aged 8+ that considers familiar and unexpected ideas about masculinity and friendship.
Weaving stories with dance and physical objects, Compagny Abis and Julien Carlier present Golem, an artistic dialogue between dancer and choreographer Julien Carlier and 75-year-old sculptor Mike Sprogis. This melting of two disciplines is an organic, sensitive and beautiful piece that speaks to us about the passage of time, our repeated gestures and their impact on body and mind.
Reflecting Dance Base’s commitment to supporting dancers’ careers at every stage of life,Timeless by Dance Base’s own PRIME & Lothian Youth Dance Company Scotland, is a life-affirming showcase that brings together dancers aged 14 to 80+ for a joyful celebration of the dance of life, regardless of where you are on the road.
81-year-old emerging artist, PRIME’s own Christine Thynne, is teaming-up with co-creator Robbie Synge to present her solo debut, These Mechanisms. Among precarious assemblies of materials, Christine performs and informs, evolves and dissolves, splashes and crashes. Committed to the joy of playful experimentation, this performance takes us to absurd and surprising places.
A regular collaborator with Dance Base, Alan Greig is set to deliver a site responsive solo dance performance, Within Reach, that looks at the ageing body and plays with gender, identity, and LGBTQ+ icons including Quentin Crisp, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis and Tennessee Williams. Delivered through a combination of eccentric spoken word monologues and crisp choreographed vignettes as he traverses the halls of Dance Base, the work provides a captivating, engaging and humorous exploration of identity, culture, and the cracked glamour of fame.
Matthew Hawkins’READY weaves around a series of Beethoven piano sonatas which are purposely selected for each performance. Set to be performed in the Dance Base garden exclusively for the opening weekend, this low-tech site-sensitive solo performance marks and celebrates over half a century of dance practice with immediacy and ample variation.
BODIES THAT DEFY EXPECTATIONS
Enter a mesmerizing world of illusion in Macarena Recuerda Shepherd’s Fringe debut The Watching Machine as she plays with light, shadows and reflections to experience what is illusion, what is representation and what is theatrical convention.
In the European premiere of Taiwan Season: Palingenesis by D_Antigone Production Taiwan, three lithe, masked bodies emerge as if from a primordial ooze and proceed to morph their way through a series of carefully crafted chain reactions. Inspired by a biological concept of regeneration, hot-shot Taiwanese choreographer Chuang Po-Hsiang’s timeless, absorbing dance trio is an extreme expression of intimacy, trust and transformation.
Next Zone makes its Fringe return as part of #DANISH inTRANSHUMANIST, a popping duet between two male dancers who unfold in an alluring universe where the boundaries between artificial and human nature dissolve. In an electronic soundscape, they take the audience into what feels like another reality in this journey of heart and mind.
Hong Kong artists Wong Tan-Ki and Dick Wong team up to present a double bill. Wong Tan-Ki’s It’s not my body – Chapter 3.5 looks to visual art to reinvestigate time, space and the body on stage, while Dick Wong wrestles with his own shadow, as pause and limbo on stage construct a strong proposition about his dance life in This is. Presented as part of Hong Kong Soul 2024.
In its Fringe debut, Miller de Nobili bring PACK to Dance Base. This energetic performance features five dancers performing hip-hop, breaking, contemporary and everything that fits in between. Presented as part of the Made in Germany Showcase, this dynamic show plays with group dynamics, exploring what rules and roles make up togetherness.
THE PHYSICAL AND THE SPIRITUAL
Having mesmerised audiences and critics alike with her 2022 performances of AND, Arbroath-born Charlotte Mclean returns to Dance Base alongside collaborators to present Futuristic Folktales.Part of the MADE IN SCOTLAND Showcase, this dance for hope scrutinises reproductive injustices by re-imagining the tale of the first womb, a folkloric creation narrative often silenced. Two dancers perform alongside an evocative soundscape of experimental bagpipes composed by Malin Lewis in this beautiful, emotive, and at times humorous, show.
In Nak Dara, Hasyimah Harith’s body is interwoven with the batik fabric, which often accompanies a Malay woman’s life at different stages from cradle to death. Likewise, the batik accompanies Hasyimah on stage in a dance embodying the twists and knots of life, breaking boundaries between action, performance, play and ritual. This European premiere tackles womanhood, sensuality and sexuality from a Southeast Asian perspective, and questions the ownership and intersections of a woman’s body against the backdrop of feminine pleasure and erotic agency.
Described as “soulful, imaginative, and rhythmically contagious” (The NY Times), Ragamala Dance Company is one of the USA’s most highly regarded companies of the South Indian diaspora. Their new work by Artistic Director Aparna Ramaswamy, Ananta, The Eternal, is the first duet performance featuring sisters and acclaimed Bharatanatyam artists Aparna and Ashwini Ramaswamy, in a performance describing the eternal relationship between the deity and the devotee.
STORIES TO MAKE YOU THINK AND FEEL
Sit back and enjoy your flight as ACCA Dance Theatre presents its first full-length show: Occupational Hazard. Fusing comedy, clowning and choreography, Occupational Hazard follows a day in the life of air hostesses Becky and Linda as they navigate consent as a woman in the service industry. Recipients of the 2024 Keep it Fringe Fund, this comedic Fringe debut from ACCA Dance Theatre will be landing in Dance Base for 2-4 August only so be sure to make it to the gate on time.
The Passion of Andrea 2 by Simone Mousset, Associate Artist at The Place, is a stylised, contemporary, laugh out loud piece of dance theatre about feelings of uneasiness, the inability to fully understand, and the painful desire for more. It is a medieval fable, a magic trick, deadly game, bizarre dance-off, absurdist musical, sci-fi epic – all in one! – that explores the feeling of overwhelm and uneasiness during an age of confusion, confrontation, and power struggle, in a surreal, silly and magnificent way.
Award-winning choreographer Mathieu Geffré with his production company Rendez-Vous dance present What Songs May do… A traditional love duet through a queer lens, two dancers expose the fractured relationship of a once romantic couple as they delve into the past in an attempt to rebuild their future together. This moving piece is performed to the evocative songs of Nina Simone.
From across the pond, Canadian dancer and choreographer Éowyn Emerald returns to Edinburgh following her acclaimed Fringe runs with a riveting jazz programme, which showcases her dazzling dancers and stunning choreographic vision. Featuring 144 Ferrero Rochers, this is a show that follows a couple from their post-war meet-cute through the journey of their life, and leaves audiences feeling the highs and lows of the emotions they convey through stunning dance technique.
RESPONDING TO THE CLIMATE CRISIS
As our planet’s voice gets louder, are we ready to listen? Lila Dance’s Fault Lines pulls at the tension in our relationship with nature, blending stunning dance, immersive imagery, evocative writing and cinematic music. Fault Lines explores our environmental impact, but asks what happens when we stand together in hope?
In its European premiere, Jajack Movement’s, Sleeper presents a beautiful partnership for a sustainable tomorrow. Part of Korean Season and presented by Atobiz Ltd, choreographer Kim Yu-mi’s unique dance language replaces the words we use to deal with the climate crisis with tying and untying knots, a traditional act of Korean community spirit, and praying for the restoration of life.
THE HOME OF DANCE
New for 2024, Fringe Fragments is a platform showcasing dance talent from around the world. Designed as a public event and industry showcase, audiences can see excerpts from tour-ready performances by artists from Sweden, England and Canada represented by Nordberg Movement, The Place and ArtCirculation. As well as enjoying a jam-packed hour of new choreography, there will also be an opportunity to hear from and get to know the artists. Whether you’re an industry professional or simply a lover of dance, Fringe Fragments will give you fresh insight into new international dance work.
As part of Fringe Fragments, Sensory and immersive experienceRadiomaton arrives in Dance Base from 15 – 19 August. Installed in a cubicle resembling a photo booth and equipped with headphones broadcasting live a local radio station, Radiomaton questions the construct of truth, media contamination, “fake news” and the role of the body in the perception of information. A coproduction and artistic partnership between MARIBÉ – SORS DE CE CORPS and Montréal Danse, Radiomaton is another way for Fringe audiences and Dance Base regulars to engage with dance this August.
Dance Base is delighted to welcome the return of its Festival public dance class programme this August. On each Sunday during the Festival, a selection of dance classes will be offered, affirming Dance Base’s commitment to providing a home for Scotland’s thriving year-round dance community and those inspired to try something new amidst the excitement of the festival season.
The Industry Hub
Operating with support from the British Council, Dance Base’s Industry Hub returns for the third year. Located in Dance Base’s Grassmarket building in the heart of Edinburgh, this space provides a much-needed location for arts professionals and delegations to meet, network and collaborate amidst the bustle of the festival season.