Ian Abbott at The Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Part 2

Show Me Your Inter/Nationalisms – Ian Abbott at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Part 2

Consider this a companion work to my response in Part 1 to some of the work from the Made in Scotland showcase at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Part 2 looks at dance works from other inter/nationalist showcases, language choices, the cost of a press release and the idea of a cultural border force that helps establish a two-tier system where artists are financially supported to bring their work to Edinburgh in return for representing their flag. The Fringe describes these showcases as: “2024 National Showcases. There are a number of showcases from across the world that support exciting work from their regions at the Fringe. Some of them offer a curated selection, others offer official support to work already coming to the Fringe.”

In 1995 Michael Billig introduced the concept of Banal Nationalism which demonstrates how nationalism is constantly flagged in the media and habits of language. He examines how symbols such as flags, national songs, sporting events, divisions into ‘domestic’ and ‘international’ news become so effective — and almost subliminal — in their everyday representations of a nation.

Introducing House of Oz, which is, in their own words, “an award-winning philanthropic powerhouse with a mission to platform Australian creative arts for international cultural export. With a track record of producing 600+ performances at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and supporting Australian artists on international tours, House of Oz showcases the diversity and excellence of Australian arts talent on the global stage. House of Oz is returning to the Fringe for a third year, in a fresh partnership with Assembly Festival. A curated showcase of twelve shows will be presented as part of a diverse programme spanning genre and generations. Venues are carefully aligned with the shows’ unique requirements. Artists receive funding to enable travel and accommodation, plus marketing, strategic and hands-on support from the House of Oz artist liaison and technical team.”

In the embargoed press release from Assembly @ Dance Base sent out in June 2024, Triptych by Lewis Major was the first show mentioned under the Programme Highlights section: “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, Triptych is 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.”

Add this to the separate press release from the team at Martha Oakes PR who were working on both Triptych and Major’s other work Lien: “Based between the deep south of Australia and Adelaide, Lewis Major is a dance artist with a background in sheep shearing and a foreground in contemporary dance theatre. He grew up on his family’s 11,000-acre farm (more than half the size of Brighton), attended bush school and didn’t set foot in a theatre until his teens. He took up gymnastics but when he saw Garry Stewart’s work for Australian Dance Theatre was driven to move into dance. In his early 20s, while studying ballet at New Zealand School of Dance, he broke his back and discovered a congenital condition which took him away from performance and into choreography.  Lewis has worked with some of the biggest names in international contemporary dance including Akram Khan, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Russell Maliphant, Hofesh Shechter and Aakash Odedra. His company, Lewis Major Projects was in residence at the Centre National de la danse in Lyon until 2017 when he decided to move back to his home state of South Australia, feeling it was the right place to pursue his creation of unabashedly audience-driven work with a local focus and a global outlook.”

By commissioning an 8-minute amuse-bouche (the first work of the triple bill) — Two x Three — from his mentor Maliphant, complete with the classic square-within-a-square lighting design from Michael Hulls, this attempt to frame and associate Major in some sort of male, choreographic lineage, master/student relationship is one that worked very successfully for Aakash Odedra back in 2011 (where I programmed his quadruple bill, Rising, at Pavilion Dance in Bournemouth). Odedra commissioned works from Maliphant/Hulls, Akram Khan, and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui as well as creating a work of his own, bringing his name into alignment with these choreographers in subsequent discussions of their work. Who was the rehearsal director for three out of those four works? Lewis Major. 

In Two x Three, however, Maliphant’s bleakly austere, classic 90s-esque choreography drawing invisible lines with pointy toes and cutting the air through a box of light is the kind of empty neo-classical technique that is anything but the palate cleanser I was looking for, but at least it offered a clarity and precision the dancers could execute. The next two works (Unfolding and Epilogue — Act 1 and Act 2), choreographed by Major, were terrible, both choreographically and in the way they were danced. What Lewis offered in his works was a Maliphant pastiche, a Poundland version of slowed-down limb extensions and faux-emo faces that was danced messily (some dancers were audibly out of breath) and had a jumble of projection, lighting effects and talcum powder in an attempt to mask what was going on. High production values and semi-dark stages can hide a lot of things, but it cannot mask distinctly average choreography and uneven technique from the dancers. By the end of the triple bill, I was almost pining for a little bit of Maliphant and that’s not a sentiment I admit to very often. I happened to be sitting next to a presenter from Australia and asked them why Major was being billed as a “choreographer to watch” and “the next big rising star from Australia”. What’s the perception in Australia? They said he hasn’t had a presentation or commission from any of the leading/national festivals in Australia. 

Major was interviewed on ABC TV in Australia back in June and said: “We met our arts fairy godmother, an amazing patron and philanthropist Georgie Black who runs House of Oz, a Sydney and London based philanthropic organisation who for the last three years have been underwriting a lot of Australian acts to go to Edinburgh, paying travel, accommodation, technical, PR, venue management and all the registration. So really de-risking the process of performing at the Edinburgh Fringe. I think it will be life changing. To have all of this support, to know there’s no risk for us, hopefully this will be the kick that we need.”

The international narratives you tell back home can really enhance/skew/distort (delete as appropriate) reality. The “perceived” success of a sold-out run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (when the venue has a small capacity) and splashy 5-star reviews from The Stage, The Scotsman and Broadway Baby definitely tell one story. I’m sure that both Black and Major will be happy with how his work has been catapulted over to Edinburgh and received at the world’s biggest arts festival. But perhaps success was already baked into the system.

There’s a quote from George Orwell on the Orwell Foundation website looking at the difference between nationalism and patriotism: “By ‘nationalism’ I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’. But secondly ­— and this is much more important — I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests. Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism…by ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.”

Good afternoon to the Luxembourg Selection: “It is with great enthusiasm that we announce the first Luxembourg showcase at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2024. The Luxembourg performing arts scene is rich in languages, influences and aesthetics, and has long been open to the international scene and prompt to meet new audiences. In the past years already some shows from Luxembourg were successfully presented at the Fringe. Then it came as a foregone conclusion that Edinburgh, hosting the world’s largest performing arts festival, was a stage for one of the smallest countries in the world, Luxembourg. Supported by Kultur | lx – Arts Council Luxembourg, and hosted by Summerhall, C Venues, Dance Base and Assembly, this first Luxembourg Selection at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe will put the dance and physical theatre scene in the spotlight. The three aesthetically various productions made by three diverse choreographers will properly showcase a range of the multiplicity of Luxembourg’s cultures and creations.”

Negare by Z Art — at the most difficult to find and unsignposted venue (C Aquila) — uses the majority of the same copy in the opening paragraph of their press release and fringe website description: “This choreographic solo immerses us in the quirky and poetic universe of a character who plays with his identity, transforming it to align with his wishes, fears, and dreams. Through the journey into the various aspects of identity transformation, Negare challenges the audience’s preconceptions, provokes thought about the impact of others’ perceptions, and delves deeply into the dynamics of denial and self-acceptance. It’s a thought-provoking work that encourages contemplation about the essence of individual and shared identity, showcased through the absurdity and authenticity of this character.”

Negare is a 30-minute interlude designed to make you double blink, furrow your brow and question the reality of what it is you’ve just seen. Broken up into three separate 10-minute, slightly absurdist character portraits, we’re presented with a manic office worker fraying at the edges stuffing reams of material into his shirt, a generous and coquettish carrot-munching critter squatting and burrowing all over the stage and finally some sort of faux religious icon draped in gold hovering slowly in an eternal consciousness.

Alexandre Lipaux is a silky shapeshifter and embodies the physical changes between the characters well, but I’m left wondering, yet again, what he has achieved. Negare is “part of acclaimed three-part series Le Triptyque” and I wonder if the other two parts might offer some contextual scaffold as to how this character emerges/resolves, because just encountering Negare in the middle of the Fringe feels difficult to place. If you think of Negare as an off-kilter video game character with whom you spend a little bit of time, maybe munch one of his carrots and tune out of the ferocity of the Fringe for a while then it might make a little more sense.

If these first two choreographic patriots are anything to go by, the future of Australian choreography is locked in a British 90s homage death spiral whilst Luxembourg makes quirky 1-act character portraits. Of course, both countries like to export and fund white male choreography, but this is one of the limits of showcases: you only get a slither of representation and no real idea of what else is going on in that country. There’s no nuance of national identity or interrogation of choreographic practice, and I question what it really means when a work is branded “from X country.” Is that optics? A representation of politics? Social status? Are these works choreographically identifiable as Australian or Luxembourgian?

How about some Performing Arts Made In Germany? “Performing Arts Made In Germany is Edinburgh Fringe Festival’s first-ever German Showcase, established in 2024. With a programme selected by an international jury, the showcase offers an overview on the German performing arts scene, with four shows featuring some of the best contemporary dance, circus, and theatre Germany has to offer. The four selected companies will present their shows in four of the main festival venues between 13th – 25th August 2024. Performing Arts Made In Germany supports the artists before, during and after the festival and aims to offer them a platform to present their work within the vibrant, international environment of Fringe. The showcase is managed and supported by Kreativ Transfer who are supported by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media to support stakeholders in the fields of the performing arts, visual arts and games in establishing and expanding their international networks to improve their visibility on the international market.”

PACK by Miller de Nobili at Assembly @ Dance Base was described in the aforementioned embargoed press release as: “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 public facing text at the Fringe box office adds a little more colour: “Five dancers, five guys, 40° in the studio. Hip-hop, breaking, contemporary and everything that fits in between. Colliding and rebounding. Hardening up and loosening up. Being alone or being part of it. One group, one PACK. We see a group testing the limits of their bodies. We hear their weight crashing on the dance floor and feel the breeze. Sometimes weightlessly whirling overhead, sometimes knotted up inside themselves. What connects them? What rules and roles make up their togetherness? How does a common place emerge?” 

What is this language? “This energetic performance features five dancers performing hip-hop, breaking, contemporary and everything that fits in between.” Everything that fits in between? Fits in between what? Breaking and hip-hop? Breaking and contemporary? I find it frustrating when people who have little breaking or hip-hop knowledge describe something in lowest common denominator terms. It happens ALL THE TIME with hip-hop and it devalues and undermines the culture, demonstrates a lack of understanding of whoever wrote the copy and gives little credibility to the company it refers to.

PACK is a well danced, choreographically thin, overly long representation of some of the shallow, stereotypical concepts associated with b-boys, crews and masculinity. There’s a strong 15 minutes of material in there but it has been overworked with a dramaturgical aimlessness, Chat-GPT-generated phrases (I’m paraphrasing here but…If you want to join our pack, a turtle isn’t an animal) and a false emotional display from the dancers showing #anger #vulnerability and #angst. 

Whilst the company, which started in 2020, has a good set of technically accomplished dancers who are able to sustain power moves and contact equally for the full 60 minutes, I think the stagecraft and nous shown by artistic directors and choreographers Chiara de’ Nobili and Alexander Miller actively reinforce negative misconceptions of what a breaking crew is or can be in 2024. They’re operating in a very narrow emotional range and have created an anonymous, edgeless b-boy boyband.

In the individual show press release put together by the PR specialist Sharon McHendry, the artistic directors and choreographers said: “PACK deals with the topic of group dynamics. The creation aims to break the stereotypes belonging to the breaking and hip hop environments through emotional depth, while enhancing the virtuous, pure movement repertoire belonging to both genres. We are taking the show to Edinburgh to expand the horizons and perceptions of hip hop culture in the theatre context.”

As this is their Fringe debut, I wonder how they can speak from a position of knowledge of what has been presented previously in a hip-hop theatre context. Whilst it is rare to see a good work that keeps hip-hop culture at its heart at the Fringe, the UK is blessed with dozens of artists and companies who are dealing in conceptually more interesting territories and changing the perception when it comes to the representation of hip-hop and masculinity.

Kreativ Transfer organised a scoping visit to the fringe in 2023 and a networking event at the Assembly Club Bar for the selected companies to offer an orientation and some contextual understanding of the fringe. “They received 120 applications and the advisory board consisted of representatives of the organisers Assembly, Dance Base, Summerhall and Underbelly as well as Nadja Dias (producer and consultant) and Wolfgang Hoffmann (Aurora Nova). After this initial screening, 54 applications were submitted to the Kreativ-Transfer jury. The final decision of the jury and the organisers was based not only on the artistic quality of each entry and its potential for successful participation in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe but also on the technical feasibility at the respective venues.” On top of this Performing Arts Made In Germany employed a UK producer for each show on top of staff from Kreative Transfer and the company’s own internal staff to ensure a full staff complement to support each of the four works at the fringe.

Whilst I didn’t see Sawdust Symphony (another show in the Performing Arts Made In Germany showcase) in Edinburgh, I saw it earlier in the year when it came to Bristol and spoke to the company afterwards as the precision and execution of this experimental woodworking circus show was exceptional. “How many weeks did it take to make and rehearse this show?” I asked. “44 weeks.” In a work that has already been performed over 100 times across nine countries, this translated to multiple 4-star and 5-star reviews for their near sell-out, two-week run in the large space at ZOO Southside. So if you do the maths, 12 shows x £15 (average ticket price) x 200 capacity = £36,000. Take 10-15% off for industry comps and not quite sold-out early sales and you’ll be getting close to £30,000 in box office receipts. Sometimes there is money to be made and Germany resourced their productions well.

In 1990, Michael Porter wrote a piece for the Harvard Business Review called The Competitive Advantage of Nations: “National prosperity is created, not inherited. It does not grow out of a country’s natural endowments, its labour pool, its interest rates, or its currency’s value, as classical economics insists. A nation’s competitiveness depends on the capacity of its industry to innovate and upgrade. Companies gain advantage against the world’s best competitors because of pressure and challenge. They benefit from having strong domestic rivals, aggressive home-based suppliers, and demanding local customers. In a world of increasingly global competition, nations have become more, not less, important. As the basis of competition has shifted more and more to the creation and assimilation of knowledge, the role of the nation has grown. Differences in national values, culture, economic structures, institutions, and histories all contribute to competitive success.

There are striking differences in the patterns of competitiveness in every country; no nation can or will be competitive in every or even most industries. Around the world, companies that have achieved international leadership employ strategies that differ from each other in every respect. But while every successful company will employ its own particular strategy, the underlying mode of operation is fundamentally the same. Companies achieve competitive advantage through acts of innovation. They perceive a new basis for competing or find better means for competing in old ways. Much innovation is mundane and incremental, depending more on a cumulation of small insights and advances than on a single, major technological breakthrough. It always involves investments in skill and knowledge, as well as in physical assets and brand reputations.”

Time for the Korean Season: “Since 1999, AtoBiz and GCC (Global Cultural exchange Committee) have promoted Korean culture and arts worldwide. In collaboration with the esteemed Assembly Festival, we proudly established the Korean Season in 2015. This event meticulously selects and presents the best of Korean performances at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the world’s largest arts festival. We are deeply honoured to invite you to a curated showcase of traditional and contemporary Korean performance, art, and literature, captivating an international audience in Edinburgh. We hope to keep surprising and delighting you as we strive to keep the Korean Season as fresh and unpredictable as in previous years.”

Sleeper by Jajack Movement at Assembly @ Dance Base was under the RESPONDING TO THE CLIMATE CRISIS header in the embargoed press release: “When the language of rational-centred social science and the words we use reach their limit, we turn to art for how it deals with the climate crisis. Your body is living through the climate crisis. The act of surviving is met with the appearance of destruction — this critical point is faced with duality, crisis and the reality of death. We face this challenge by tying and untying knots, a traditional act of Korean community spirit and praying for the restoration of life. Programmed by Dance Base in collaboration with Assembly.”

Led by the choreographer Kim Yu-mi, Sleeper was OK. A perfectly reasonable 40-minute contemporary dance work with four technically proficient performers which was “inspired by Paulo Coelho’s book The Fifth Mountain.” Whilst a dancer trapped in a cling film wardrobe struggling against the entire climate crisis was thrashing about for the first half of the show, he was eventually set free by the other dancers and calmed down a little. Supported by the PR specialist Wendy Niblock, an additional press release mentions “…the process began with many challenges including the absence of dancers and other constraints, the choreographer felt that she was starting alone in a vast, empty field. In Coelho’s book, the question arises: Why do you cling to such a short and pain-filled existence? What is the meaning of your struggle?”

The meaning of my struggle with Sleeper was their facsimile of emotions rather than enabling us as an audience to conjure up our own emotions. But rather than making us feel something of the rage-inducing hopelessness of our impending climate disaster, we were offered a manicured garden of emotion. We know that the world is literally being wiped out by fossil-fuel companies, billionaires and other self-serving industries, but the wincing faces and the furious arm work were quickly turned on and off and the bodies of the dancers left me thinking they didn’t really believe their own concept; it was stuck on rather than embedded into their bodies. I’m currently reading It’s Not That Radical: Climate Action To Transform The World by Mikaela Loach and the way it’s written has a much greater ability to mobilise and stimulate action than this work of contemporary dance from Korea, whose members will have flown over 11,000 miles for their return journey to Scotland to talk about the climate crisis.

In an end of festival press release from Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, Shona McCarthy — who was appointed Chief Executive in 2016 and announced last month that she will be leaving her post in Spring 2025 — says: “As the most influential arts marketplace in the world, this year over 1,800 arts industry members accredited with the Fringe Society came to Edinburgh to seek new work for onward touring and broadcast opportunities. Over 2.6 million tickets were issued, 3,746 shows were registered and 60 countries were represented, including 13 country showcases. Almost 900 media professionals from 27 countries were accredited, the number of reviewers was up 6% on 2023 and 510 artists also attended the annual Meet the Media event, designed to support performers without professional PR support.”

Whilst Golem by Compagnie ABIS and Julien Carlier from the French-speaking part of Belgium wasn’t part of a “Belgium at the Fringe Showcase”, the company were financially supported by Wallonie-Bruxelles Théâtre Danse agency and Wallonie-Bruxelles International to present the work at Assembly @ Dance Base (after originally being programmed back in the COVID-disrupted season of 2020). Framed under the “Artists Of All Ages” section of the Dance Base press release, it offered this: “Weaving stories with dance and physical objects, Compagnie 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.”

Of all the works under those inter/nationalist banners, Golem was the most interesting; it was formally experimental, proffered an original take on the ageing body, delivered some delicious imagery and it was almost an astonishing work. Almost, because whilst Carlier may have once been an active bboy, he hasn’t performed in one of his own works since 2021 and the breaking skills, freezes and floor work on display here — which attempts some sort of call and response to what Sprogis is doing — are rusty. Sprogis as the clay OG is so watchable; seeing how he lugs and pummels this 30kg of material around the stage and the effect it has on his body as he builds his golems, digging into the clay, gouging out the eyes, slowly crushing its face to death and transforming it in real time is a delight. 

Add to this the live electronic hip-hop drum track and synth samples from the percussionist Tom Malmendier and it’s clear that Carlier needs to step out of the work for it to shine. As the work progresses in the second half we see Sprogis treat Carlier’s body as living clay, moving limbs, animating, stretching and rolling it before they engage in some simple release, contact and lift work. The precision, degradation and disintegration of the body, how strength leaves and skills plateau are all in there from Sprogis, but if there was a bgirl or bboy in their mid 40s who had the power, skills and gravitas to match Malmendier and Sprogis then the work would be exceptional.

There was an article in The Guardian from 2023 which shared the real costs of what it took to bring three British companies (£12,000, £7,750 and £22,000) to the fringe and in two of those shows the costs of a PR representative was £3,900 and £4,000. Some of the financial support received for some of the works mentioned above include:

1) a €20,000 grant and having to find an additional €5,000 as their total fringe cost was €25,000
2) having all travel, accommodation, fringe registration, venue hire, technical and fees paid for the entire team
3) the full cost of bringing their show, but sharing some localised costs with others in their inter/nationalist showcase

So, who really makes the decisions about what we see at the Fringe? Are the likes of Georgie Black from the House of Oz, Wolfgang Hoffman and others who run/select the inter/nationalist showcases and deem certain artists worthy flag bearers in Edinburgh the real Cultural Border Force? Banal nationalism will only continue to grow at the Fringe and I’m reminded of The Great Exhibition of 1851, the first international exhibition of manufactured products. Having grown out of a series of modest, industrial design exhibitions staged in London by the Royal Society of Arts, leading figures — including the RSA president, Prince Albert, the Prince Consort, and the design reformer, Henry Cole — hoped to stage something much more ambitious. After attending the Paris Expo of 1849, like the unbridled colonialists they were, they wanted an even larger event, international in scope, as a place where Britain’s engineering and manufactured goods could be compared with those of its international competitors. The cash profits (£186,000 in 1851 or around £31,000,000 today) from the exhibition were spent on establishing a new cultural quarter in South Kensington, London, which featured the Victoria and Albert Museum, Science Museum, Imperial College, the Royal Albert Hall and other cultural institutions.

Can you imagine if the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society were to invest some of the money it t(m)akes from its rage-inducing booking fee of “£1.25 per ticket up to a maximum of £5 per transaction” after the rebate is given back to venues and invests it into the performing arts infrastructure in Scotland and not just use it as another income stream? 2.6 million tickets x £1.25 = £3,250,000 and that’s before the commission of 4% + VAT they take on every ticket sold as well. Who would have thought that the Edinburgh Festival Fringe would become the living embodiment of what Orwell forecast many decades ago: “The abiding purpose of every nationalist [showcase] is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.”