Edinburgh Fringe Festival: Dance and Circus Previews

Mere Mortals

This was San Francisco Ballet’s big new commission in 2024, now getting its European premiere at Edinburgh international festival. An ambitious production with some impressive visuals, it’s a show for our times: an AI-themed retelling of the Pandora’s box myth by choreographer Aszure Barton. Music is by British producer Floating Points, who performs live, with an orchestra.

Edinburgh Playhouse, 28-30 August

Ihsane

Belgian Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is a prolific creator, whether it’s making dance moves for Madonna or crafting his own deeply thoughtful, multi-layered dance theatre. Ihsane belongs to the latter category, a meditation on Cherkaoui’s Moroccan roots and cycles of destruction and rebirth, grief and hope. With live music from Tunisian viola d’amore player Jasser Haj Youssef.

Festival theatre, 18-20 August

Good Enough?

Danish company Himherandit scored a hit at the fringe a few years back with sweaty dance marathon Mass Effect. This follow-up is a completely different prospect, just a trio of performers, a chair each and a microphone, telling their life stories in physical theatre made of queer joy and vulnerability.

Summerhall, 19-30 August

Under Mask

Taiwanese choreographer Lai Yun-Chi is a former member of Shechter II, Hofesh Shechter’s junior company, which is made up of some of the best young dancers from around the world, so the Edinburgh debut of her own company Mailantia is intriguing. Under Mask draws on her family’s history as leatherworkers and uses intricate steampunk-style masks.

Assembly @ Dance Base, 6-30 August

Ballet Nights

A staple of the London dance calendar, Ballet Nights is now off on a national tour, including its first fringe shows. It’s a gala- or cabaret-style format with a lively compere and a bunch of different acts, from top-level classical ballet pas de deux to brand new contemporary dance, plus live music.

Music Hall at Assembly Rooms, 24-30 August

The Palestinian Circus

A circus group based in Birzeit, just north of Ramallah, the Palestinian Circus performed at last year’s Glastonbury festival and now take their acrobatics to the fringe. Their show Step and a Half is inspired by the rhythms of the Palestinian folk dance dabkeh, mixing traditional culture with contemporary circus.

Underbelly’s Circus Hub on the Meadows, 8-29 August

Flamenc Oh!!

A comedy flamenco show from Spain (it’s a co-production with London’s Sadler’s Wells) that sends up flamenco’s cliches with a whole lot of love. They’re calling it an “irreverent tribute” rather than a parody – it’s proper flamenco dance and music from quality performers, with knowing humour on the side.

Music Hall at Assembly Rooms, 6-30 August

Exit

Belgian circus artist Piet Van Dycke’s Exit has a seemingly simple set made of walls and doorways that turns out to be a maze of revolving platforms for the four performers to navigate (each specialises in a different circus discipline: teeterboard, aerial belts, trapeze and acro-dance). It’s a dance of continual arrival and departure, appearance and disappearance.

Zoo Southside, 18-30 August

Boys Don’t Dance

Marc Brew is an Australian dancer who made the brilliant An Accident/A Life, about the car accident that left him a paraplegic. Boys Don’t Dance is another autobiographical work, reflecting on his childhood love of dance and society’s response to that, featuring dance on foot and on wheels (BMX, wheelchair) and an 80s soundtrack.

Assembly @ Dance Base, 7-23 August

Twelve: Going the Distance

New York choreographer Marisa F Ballaro makes her Edinburgh debut with a dance piece set in a boxing ring. Five women see if they can go the distance over 12 rounds as allegiances and rivalries play out and exhaustion sets in. Raw physicality meets American modern dance.

Summerhall, 6-16 August

Glob

For your annual dose of winsome, whimsical French-Canadian circus, roll up for Les Foutoukours and their show Glob. Winner of the young audience award at Avignon’s festival fringe, it stars two sweetly comical fluffy creatures with clown noses, and is a peaceful break from the world for the over-fives.

Underbelly, Bristo Square, 5-30 August

Everybody’s Got a Bomb