Reviews & features: Donald Hutera

Juilliard School bring upcoming dance stars to Edinburgh International Festival

High profile American dance institution set for Playhouse performance

Each August scores of budding artists, many still studying their craft, flock to Edinburgh to test their performance mettle in what even die-hard professionals might regard as a dauntingly competitive market. It’s these same young people – a few of…

Dance icon Deborah Colker brings Tatyana to 2012 Edinburgh International Festival

Brazilian choreographer brings show based on Pushkin's Eugene Onegin to Edinburgh

When you approach the latest dance production by trailblazing, Olivier Award-winning Brazilian choreographer Deborah Colker, please jettison clichés of samba, sun and surf. The small, blonde dynamo, 52 this year, is hugely popular in her native country…

Minnesota-based dance company Rhythmic Circus present Feet Don’t Fail Me Now!

Described as ‘a cross between a dance show, a rock concert and a comedy hour,’ the Minnesota-based Rhythmic Circus is back for a full run after just one week at the 2011 Fringe. Featuring four hard-hitting, rapid-fire dancers and original…

Australian company Casus bring physical performance Knee Deep to Fringe 2012

Festival show takes gymnastics and feats of strength to new level

How do you assemble a circus show when those involved are all busy with projects abroad? Skype’s fine for generating ideas, says Jesse Scott of Casus, but this newly-formed Australian company’s inaugural show, Knee Deep didn’t begin to find its legs…

Edinburgh Fringe dance show Flash Mob brings together TV dance show favourites

Tommy Franzen and others from Got to Dance and So You Think You Can Dance?

Performance-based reality TV shows get a bad rap for chewing up talent and spitting it out again. That’s where this production by World Dance Management steps in with a slick new show spotlighting dancers who shot to prominence on programmes like Sky1’s…

Maybe if you Choreograph Me, You Will Feel Better

Solo show with a unique personal experience

Tania El Khoury is a gifted young Lebanese performance artist based in the UK. This tantalising solo gives one man at a time the power to decide what she’ll do and how she will do it. Led to a ‘secret’ yet public location we speak to her via headset a…

Enclosure 99 - Humans

Janis Claxton dance piece set in Edinburgh Zoo

When Janis Claxton took up daily residence in an Edinburgh Zoo enclosure during the 2008 Fringe, she had no idea how much attention she and her fellow dancers would generate. ‘I was only doing it as an experiment,’ Claxton avows, ‘absolutely unaware…

Interview - Muirne Bloomer and Emma O’Kane of The Ballet Ruse

Ballerinas swap the barre for the bar

The origins of The Ballet Ruse, by seasoned Irish dancers Muirne Bloomer and Emma O’Kane, are simple. ‘In 2009 we were both single and decided to make a groundbreaking piece about dating,’ remembers Bloomer. But things took a turn in the studio. ‘We…

Swimming With My Mother a tender mother and son dance duet

2011 Edinburgh festival show from Ireland' CoisCéim Dance Theatre

David Bolger, director of Ireland’s double Fringe First-winning company CoisCéim (Gaelic for footstep) Dance Theatre, is back with a show that promises to resonate with tender, loving and far from soggy memories. Bolger grew up by Dublin Bay: ‘I was…

120 Birds

Glamorous homage to dance gone by

What a treat this invented slice of dance history is. Inspired by the international touring of such dance legends as Anna ‘The Dying Swan’ Pavlova early in the 20th century, Liz Lea has mounted a fabulously ambitious little show for which she…

Where Did It All Go Right?

Passion and fun in the nightclub

Presented by Dance Base in the backroom bar of an underground gay hotspot, this light and lively send-up of the mating rituals of clubbing must be one of the most accessible pieces of dance theatre on the Fringe. Devised by Ireland’s ponydance…

Dance Base Presents…

One stop shop for dance fans

Pop open the Dance Base brochure and what do you see? A picture of artistic director, Morag Deyes beckoning you into one of the most striking arts-centred buildings in Edinburgh. And why go? To see what will be one of the more eclectic, stimulating and…

The Cholmondeleys and the Featherstonehaughs

Dance of Death

It’s hardly damning the cast of Dancing On Your Grave to call them a handful of dead-beats. Created by the veteran choreographer Lea Anderson for members of her two cult dance companies, The Cholmondeleys (pronounced ‘chum-leez’) and The…

Impressing the Czar

‘You’re going to get really lost,’ predicts Aki Saito, principal dancer with the Royal Ballet of Flanders. She’s talking about the average person’s reaction to William Forsythe’s three-act extravaganza, Impressing the Czar. ‘You won’t know what to…