“simple joy…great pleasure…welcome invitation” Two Destination Language’s Katherina Radeva has every toe tapping in approval with 40/40
📍Fruitmarket, Edinburgh
📅 Tue 7 Feb
💷 £12/£10 (conc.)
🕖 11am/3:30pm
🕖 Running time (approx.): 80 minutes (no interval)
👍 Produced by: Two Destination Language
🎬 Conceived, created, written, designed and performed: Katherina Radeva
🩰 Movement support: Liz Aggiss, Lucy Suggate, Rachel Krische
🎂 14+
🎭 Wheelchair Accessible Venue, Wheelchair Accessible Toilet
The content warning for this show reads, ‘nudity, heavy breathing, middle aged woman dancing with much joy,’ which is a perfectly good review of the show, thank you for reading, farewell…just kidding. Swiss army knife theatre company Two Destination Language, who I last reviewed when putting on their fabulous Fault Lines a few years ago, return with yet another spiffing show.
One might describe 40/40 as a potted biography of creator/performer Katherina Radeva, a memoir inspired by a 40th birthday and rendered in mixed media: dance, and recorded thought. Letting dictated musings do most of the talking, Radeva occupies herself with physical expression, dance, and having a darn good time.
Thematically, 40/40 is pre-occupied with context. It is everything after all, and yet seems to come in different shapes and sizes. In one context, Katherina is an award-winning set and costume designer, in another she is a successful performing artist and co-director of a successful theatre company. Then there’s the 16 year old immigrant to the UK, layered atop the child informed she was too chubby to compete as a rhythmic gymnast despite her evident talent.
All of these people, all of these boxes which she refuses to be enclosed by, to be defined by, come out to play during the show, not as distinct people she has been, but as the multitude she has become.
Structurally, the show exists as a series of dances, introduced and interlinked by voice-memos transposed from earlier days spent conceiving the show. There’s a refreshing lack of abstraction to the performance, her mindset laid bare, her motivations made clear. She dances to defy stereotypes, and to claim her heritage; she dances to give her denied teen space to shine; she dances for joy; she dances to connect. The sum is a perfectly contained little narrative, not intended to change the world, but to assert her permission to exist and work within it.
Radeva, though practised, isn’t a life-long student of dance, and that’s critical to the show’s success. There’s a wonderful accessibility to the whole experience, an invitation to all watching to find their own space and start dancing. Which isn’t to say there’s a lack of accomplishment on show, far from it. Take it from this former dance teacher of many years, that making a show this consistently interesting, and polished is far from a given.
There are elements of contemporary, folk, belly, urban, and more woven through her choreographies, creating a whole which puts one in mind of that unknown stranger in a club which many of us have watched in admiration. That dancer who without technical mastery still owned their space, whilst those about them rented theirs. It’s quite a trick to capture that and put it on stage. Perhaps it’s not revolutionary, and maybe 40/40 isn’t telling us anything we don’t already know, but there has to be a place on stage for unashamed fun.
The set is elegantly uncomplicated, a large, white square taped with motifs suggesting snakes, ladders, bodies, and boxes; strip-lights around the perimeter offer a palette from disco to daylight. Critically the soundtrack is crystal clear and well balanced – not a given when crossing genres from folk to rave. Sound support Tim Blazdell and lighting support Marty Langthorne were clearly worthy contributors.
The performing arts aren’t known for liberally offering space to those over 25 (never mind 35), nor for green lighting those who might want to add more strings to their bows over time. 40/40 sticks two fingers up to that conceit, and likely encourages such rebellious ideas in those watching.
In the end there’s a simple pleasure to watching Katherina drawing shapes on the ground in coloured sticky tape between exertions, and a great joy in watching her set loose. There’s an admirable bravery to airing out your inner world so publicly, and a welcome invitation to celebrate the entire, messy experience of being human.
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