Fringe Dance and Physical Theatre

My Land

Assembly Roxy

****

DEP

Zoo Southside

**

Mary Brennan

A LAYER of gritty golden sand covers Roxy’s pocket-hankie stage. In My Land, it represents desert wastes where hooded nomads come and go, pausing only to fling aside robes (and caution) in order to execute acrobatic balances that take them to the brink of derring-do, and us to the edge of our seats.

The balletic sensuality that prowls, stretches and occasionally lolls back in My Land is somewhat subtler than in Recirquel Company Budapest’s steamy 2017 Fringe hit, Paris de Nuit. It hints at ancient mysteries that - like the illuminated glass floor that’s underneath the sand - are only revealed when the seven Ukrainian performers brush it away with a bout of superbly competitive juggling, or a contortionist’s sinewy display, that unfold like a tribal ritual.

It looks gorgeous, the soundscore - featuring traditional Tatar and Moldavian music - is delectable, the circus skills often breath-taking, and never more so than when Sergii Materinskyi defies gravity by moving to and fro between the rungs of an unsupported ladder.

The cultural heritage of Vietnam - the homeland Dam Van Huynh left at the age of five - filters through the soundtrack to DEP, with traditional funeral chants forming part of Martyna Poznanska’s own composition.

Death and rebirth are cited as choreographic themes: the three male and two female dancers are entirely naked throughout, as if their bodies were conduits for those rites of passage. All five have an unselfconscious ability to surrender to the often-opaque impulses of Van Huynh’s choreography, whirling and leaping at speed or holding stillness at impressive length.

The nakedness, however, doesn’t add to Van Huynh’s ideas in the way he perhaps hoped: the sound of flesh slapping against sweaty flesh - or bruisingly against the floor - doesn’t speak of spirituality, or of transcendence.