Global acts, international stage

Organised concurrently every summer with Edinburgh’s Art, Fringe and Book Festivals is the Edinburgh International Festival (EIF), a performance extravaganza that spans dance, music, theatre and visual arts as well as related events such as talks and workshops. Unlike the Fringe Festival, EIF’s programme is curated and works are presented mostly at conventional venues, making it somewhat less hectic for the audience to attend. Most of my time in Edinburgh revolved around Fringe works in the morning and afternoon and with EIF in the evening before heading back to my hotel room in Glasgow.
Edinburgh-based Grid Iron Theatre Company’s world premiere of “Leaving Planet Earth” had the audience check in at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre and took us on three buses to the New Earth, which was in fact Edinburgh International Climbing Arena, the world’s largest indoors rock-climbing space. There, we witnessed dramatic events of our first migration to the new planet performed by actors and discovered how attached we remained to the Old Earth. The three-and-a-half hour experience was engaging at times, though glances at my watch had me praying that I would not miss the last train to Glasgow.
Your Media Arts Project’s European premiere of “Madame Freedom” – based on the 1950s film about the social and cultural freedom given to Korean women by American ballroom dance – infused film, digital art, dance and music. Ultimately it was Hyung Su Kim’s digital wizardry that dominated the work and overwhelmed the human elements in it. Kim’s installation work “Media Skins” was also on display on the sidewalk in front of another playhouse.
In Beijing’s People’s Art Theatre production of Shakespeare’s “Coriolanus”, performed in Mandarin with English supertitles, director Lin Zhaohua had the heavy metal bands Miserable Faith and Suffocated performing live and occasionally at centre stage. It added a pulsating and contemporary atmosphere to the work even though the musicians in their usual all-black rock attire didn’t blend with the other characters. Apart from the commanding performance by veteran actor Pu Cunxin in the title role, Lin also filled the stage with many Chinese extras, some of whom looked like they actually lived in Edinburgh.
Newly founded, seven-member dance company LA Dance Project – led by French-born, US-based choreographer Benjamin Millepied who will soon become the director of the Paris Opera Ballet – performed in the UK for the first time with a triple programme with works of different periods, styles and tones of contemporary dance. The show, which featured Millepied’s “Moving Parts” (2012) to Merce Cunningham’s “Winterbranch” (1964) and William Forsythe’s “Quintett” (1993), demonstrated the promise and skills of this strong ensemble,
It’s noteworthy that the last three contemporary dance and theatre works were substantially supported by their respective countries.
“Madame Freedom”, for example, was funded by South Korea’s Culture, Sports and Tourism Ministry, the Korea Creative Content Agency, Korean Cultural Centre UK and Korean Arts Management Service. It’s a reminder how artists receive support when picked by an international festival. Our own Culture Ministry would do well to take a closer look at how other countries are not just presenting predictable traditional works and perhaps also come up with some money.