Sawdust Symphony ★★★★★ Zoo Southside (Venue 82) until 25 August IIIII - about the art of letting go ★★★★ Underbelly’s Circus Hub on the Meadows (Venue 360) until 24 August PACK ★★★ Assembly @ Dance Base (Venue 22) until 25 August Sawdust Symphony is that rarest of things at the Fringe - a show like no other. It’s hard to imagine anyone else dreaming up the concept, let alone having the skill and talent to execute it. So plaudits galore must be laid at the dusty feet of Michael Zandl, David Eisele and Kolja Huneck, each of them graduates of circus school but who any local joiner would be lucky to have.
This love affair between carpentry and clowning has given birth to the most witty, fascinating, bizarre and, at times, enchanting production. The action plays out on a large set made up of wooden planks, but all manner of things are going on below, hidden from view. Long nails pop up out of nowhere (leading to a hilarious ‘whack-a-mole’ routine), trap doors are opened and closed to reveal heads and hands, and hammers are expertly thrown and caught.
There’s also sawdust, lots of it - which is sprinkled like fairy dust or stuffed inside clothing, depending on how surreal the section is. Whether they’re competing with each other to build a chair, fashioning a circus tool on a lathe, or covering themselves in glue, Zandl, Eisele and Huneck exhibit precision timing without a hint of bombast. A unique show that’s an absolute joy from start to finish.
The Cyr wheel has become an integral part of many modern-day circus shows, and for good reason. The large, circular apparatus, in which performers spin gracefully, has a spellbinding quality that never fails to impress. What’s perhaps less obvious to observers sitting comfortably in their seats, is just how heavy and cumbersome the Cyr wheel is to manipulate.
Circus artistes, of course, make it look easy but this contemplative show from creative duo Sandra Hanschitz and Joël Beierer is here to make us think again. IIIII - about the art of letting go blends dance, original music and the aforementioned wheel to create something quietly beautiful. At first, the apparatus doesn’t exist, so Hanschitz dances around the space as if she herself were a wheel.
Then, piece by piece, the Cyr wheel is slowly constructed before our eyes (interesting in itself) before Hanschitz steps inside to demonstrate what it can do. All of this is accompanied by Beierer’s score which, remarkably, was composed using sounds the wheel makes when struck (which is far more delicate than you’d think). This show’s unhurried pace won’t be for everyone, but if you can sit with it, the rewards are plentiful.
Dressed in everyday trousers and Aertex tops, the male dancers in PACK look more akin to pals hanging out on a golf course than a hip hop crew. Waving to each other, giving high-fives and pausing for group photographs, the room is filled with camaraderie and friendship. To a soundtrack of plucking bluesy guitar, they pretend to be aeroplanes and drop in and out of dance steps as they navigate the space cheerfully.
If it weren’t for the top tock, windmills, back flips and head spins that pepper their movement, the breakdance credentials of the five performers from Miller de Nobili dance group would remain unknown. Then everything turns on its head (and not in a breakdance way), as the mood grows sombre and the smiles cease. “If you want to belong to us,” one of them says, “you need a six-pack,” followed by several other ‘rules’ of belonging.
An overly slow section follows which lasts way past the point of engagement, before returning to the brightly lit energy of before. Which is a shame, because the message about male bonding and the often macho world of hip hop was really going somewhere..
