No war scares or torturous refugee issues tonight, November 5, but getting unexpectedly intimate on stage with a strange woman. That could happen to you during Dancing on the Edge. The congenial, biennial festival featuring artists from the Middle East and North Africa can be seen in various cities until 14 November.
Once started by race entrepreneur and dancer Gary Feingold, the original dance festival is Dancing on the Edge – confronting dance from the Middle East - grown into a wider festival of arts. 'Art can ask questions, bring people together, point out the power of difference, and offer new views to break through ingrained patterns.' Tonight I see at the Korzo theatre Miniatures: a dance itinerary of short performances about love. One of which came very close.
Document
A balding bearded man, decked out in the suit of an absent professor, lays down a dress on stage. He is alone. Who the dress belongs to is unclear. But the man says it a lot, he wants to write a lot about it. For he scatters envelopes over the dress, throws them higher and higher, until they swirl down. Mirhan Tomasyan (Turkey) continues his solo with Western modern dance movements at a non-Western speed and lightness. As in his recurrent spinning dive to the floor, as an escape from his despairing thoughts.
Reality
The performance moves and at the top of a studio, a bald woman in a white robe suddenly stands up. With her penetrating eyes, she samples the audience. She climbs onto the lap of one of them and together they begin a duet. It seems scripted reality: rehearsed and feigned reality. Seems, until the woman notices me. And comes straight at me.
Interaction
Before I realise it, I am drifting onto the studio floor behind Imen Smaoui (Tunisia), where the audience is seated around us in a U-shape. As a reviewer, I have the advantage of being able to shelter in the safety of behind a desk but now I am sitting pontifically on stage. And Imen starts a wild solo. Then she stands in front of me and looks into my eyes from about ten centimetres away. Those penetrating eyes, remember. I don't know Imen, but like two individuals from different places in the world, we connect. 'I'm better at body language than words,' she explains during an after-talk.
More
The three other miniatures are by Cristiano Carpanini (France), Hazem Header and Ezzat Ismail (Egypt) and Nejib Ben Khalfallah (Tunisia). Header and Ismail, in Keso Dekker-like costumes, start off fraternally side by side and work with jolts towards a coming out toe, in the film Mirage Nejib Ben Khalfallah dances a naked, abandoned solo in the desert and Cristiano Carpanini depicts a relationship with a lover who is not there. By ponderingly folding laundry.
Sketches
Everyone at Miniatures was commissioned to work out a solo about love within a week. This provides an introduction to interesting and not so interesting sketches and ideas from dance makers from other cultures. I was put on Dancing on the Edge at least shaken out of my cocoon for a while.
Now you.
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