Pomegranates Festival of International Dance 2023 kicks off with a fascinating exhibition, and closes with a truly electic triple bill of live acts drawn from across the traditional dance landscape.
📍 Scottish Storytelling Centre, Edinburgh
📅 28 April 2023
🕖 7:00pm
🕖 Running time (approx.): 90 minutes
👥 Featuring: Gabriel Schmitz, Yuxi Jiang, Vincent Hantam and Ariana Stoyanova & Alexis Street
👥 Hosted by: Pomegranates Festival
💰 Pay What You Can
After a day of international tradition dance workshops unattended by The QR (You’ll be amazed to read – though I was once a dance teacher), dancers and dance fans assembled at the Scottish Storytelling Centre for a Triple Bill of live dance acts this April 28th. Before this however, this year’s artist-in-resdience at Pomegranates Festival 2023 – Gabriel Schmitz was on hand to introduce his exbhition ‘Duets’. On show until the 1st May 2023, in the Storytelling Court.
This was he explained, his first time working with traditional dancers, his life till this commission spent working with contemporary artists. The result is a wonderful translation of the kinetic forces and trained technique of the dancer onto canvas, as mediated by flashing charcoal in artisinal hands. Indeed rarely can dancers have such an opportunity to truly see themselves as another sees them.
Where the exhibitions accompanying some festivals can feel a little tacked on, this work from Schmitz, who recently exhibited at the 59th Venice Biennale 2022, deserves a deliberate, and not incidental visit.
The Triple Bill began with Yuxi Jiang‘s “Wish Upon a Falling Star,” an award-winning solo based on Chinese folk dance and performed for the first time in Scotland. This dance is part of the research for “The Last Leaf on Earth,” a new choreography being developed by Yuxi Jiang for three Scottish dancers.
The audio seemed a touch distorted, but this was a fascinating opening to the night. Jiang is a spry, and capable dancer, her choreography dynamic and eye-catching. There’s more than a little theatre to this performance, a sense of a character on a journey. Indeed she made full use of the compact stage in the Netherbow theatre, as she progressed to a whirlng, sweeping conclusion. It will be truly fascinating to see how this work contributes to the larger show being developed.
Vincent Hantam, choreographer-in-residence at this year’s Pomegranates, came next with ‘Steal Away and Pray.’ Choreographed by Jim Hastie, the late Artistic Director of Margaret Morris Movement International, this was a rare chance to experience this pioneering form of modern dance. Dancing barefoot to the 1860’s American Spiritual ‘Steal Away and Pray’, Hantam embodied simultaneous power and relaxation, his every movement carefully considered yet naturally executed.
The result is akin to a shared meditation between Hantam and the audience, an invitation to a more purposeful attitude to movement. Could Pomegranates embody fusion more than staging an ancestral form of ballet, performed by a son of South Africa wearing a kilt, and soundtracked by an African-American spiritual?
Closing out the night fell to Thistles and Sunflowers Dance Fusion, a work choreographed and performed (alongside a clutch of Bulgarian and Highland dancers) by trad dance duo Ariana Stoyanova and Alexis Street. Seeking to draw parallels between Scottish and Bulgarian folk dance traditions, regional variations, and friendship, it was commissioned for the Thistles and Sunflowers festival in Scotland’s Year of Stories 2022.
The Scottish portion of the soundtrack fell to a live, and potent performance from piper Robert Burns, whilst fabulous harpist Tsvetelina Likova offered an ethereal supplement to recorded Bulgarian orchestrations.
A fitting choice to close the opening night of the Pomegranates Festival 2023, the result is an ambiable, gently choreographed international dance battle. No shade is thrown, only affection. Moreover, it’s fascinating to see how the music, and dance of two cultures shaped by the bagpipes both resemble, and diverge from, each other. The Highland tradition, built on precision and agility contrasted with the complex footwork and subtly rhythmic Bulgarian discipline certainly attracts one’s attentions shoe-wards.
Of course in the end dance is a common language, and so Stoyanova & Street’s choreography ultimately sees the assembled dancers settle into a series of interwoven progressions. Paired with their ‘opposite’ numbers and dancing to a blended rhythm, the result is an uplifting and merrily synergistic finale!
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