Edinburgh Fringe 2014: MurleyDance

MurleyDance is something of an oddity in the world of small independent dance companies, in that it proudly wears pointe shoes. Yes, this is – according to its own publicity - the only professional classical ballet company attending the Fringe, and Artistic Director David Murley is playing that uniqueness for all he’s worth, issuing a press release calling for more ballet companies to attend Edinburgh’s annual arts circus.

Now, I like ballet. I more than like it. I watch videos of the Rose Adagio the way some people listen to Eye of the Tiger. But it’s got to be the right art form for the job at hand. To be blunt: dancers bleed for ballet, even on temporary staging in Edinburgh church halls draped with black curtains. Pointe shoes are not in and of themselves beautiful; the ability to do a “six o’clock” arabesque is not in and of itself beautiful – these things get their value from being used to create art, meaning to make us feel strange or exhilarated or challenged or at the very least like we’ve been in the presence of someone who has something they desperately want to express.

David Murley’s own piece, Seated, which openes the show (titled Object of My Affection as a whole), fails on all these counts. This “study of status and sentiment” claims to examine “the relationships we form with objects”, which is an interesting enough premise. Material culture, and the way humans exist in, for and through “things”, are hot topics in literary and cultural studies right now, and objects are gradually being seen to have a kind of life force and agency, a self-sufficient “thingness” (yes, honestly) that doesn’t derive only from the value humans give them. This could be a fascinating avenue to explore in dance, but Murley doesn’t go there: instead he supplies a series of vignettes based around chairs, which offer neither sharp observation nor dance invention. The material is so thin that the performers, on the whole talented and likeable enough, mostly struggle to pull it off. Monica Tapidaor and Gabriele Santoni have enough elegant chemistry to make decent work of an 18th century “conversation chair” duet, despite the hackneyed master/servant concept, and Dylan Waddell stands out a mile for charm: whirling on an American bar stool, he pursues a saucy siren with a wide-eyed, eager admiration which makes her seem like the fairest princess (pictured above right).

À une passante, by upcoming contemporary choreogapher Anthony Kurt-Gabel, is a step up. The simple premise of a missed opportunity, which is then played out in its imagined entirety, is achieved by having two couples on stage, the “real” couple (Tapiador and Santoni again, pictured left), who are all restraint and regret, and the “dream” couple (Eloïse Hymas and Ashley Selfe), whose passionate encounter is embodied in a more than competent contemporary lyrical pas de deux. It has very little to do with the music (“by Vasks” apparently; the programme supplies no other details), a monotonous succession of high violin notes, but otherwise this is a decent piece of storytelling (though perhaps too long) expressively brought to life by the dancers.

Richard Chappell, the choreographer of Into Decay, is only 19, and this piece marks him out as one to watch. The hipsterish video footage of grimy objects against net curtains didn’t do much for me, and the hyperextended, athletic dance language, clearly inspired by Wayne McGregor et al, felt a little derivative at times, but Chappell handled his dancers with engaging confidence, moving them around in an inventive series of formations that gave them all a chance to shine as individuals. The music (again no details of its origins) had the immense advantage of quite a strong electronic beat, which gave the dancers something to push against, and they responded by crackling into life – Georgina Connolly and Naomi Shimon both showing a confident musicality that Seated had given them no chance to express, Dylan Waddell standing out again for a contorted, intense solo.

On balance, I commend MurleyDance for their chutzpah in mounting a show like this, and I admire the young dancers for the effort they put into animating their material. But if he wants his company to survive and keep its ballet focus in a tough climate for small dance outfits, David Murley needs to be ruthless in giving it only the best choreography to perform. If that means excluding his own pieces, so be it.

• Object of My Affection is at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (Greenside @ Nicolson Square, Venue 209) until 23 August.