Desert Island Dances

Tripping the light fantastic down memory lane

This year, a proportion of the Fringe dance programme seems to be backing away from huge, political themes, focusing instead on small, personal moments of introversion. Desert Island Dances by Wendy Houston, whose Haunted, Daunted and Flaunted triptych won her the Jerwood Choreography Award in 2003, side-steps the inherent potential for self-indulgence by drawing inspiration from an unlikely source.

‘On Desert Island Discs, they use pieces of music as a way of stimulating memory and ask what items you’d take with you to an island,’ says Houston. ‘I want to make a series of dance pieces about the movements that you’d take with you.’ Some of those remembered movements may well be familiar to the audience, too; following the eclectic, episodic format of the radio programme, Houston mixes in memories of childhood science lessons and 1980s television icons.

‘People always think movement pieces are going to be po-faced,’ she says. ‘I want to prove that they don’t have to be.’ (Kirstin Innes)

Theatre Workshop, 226 5425, 20–25 Aug, 6pm, £9 (£7).

More: Desert Island Dances, Edinburgh Festivals, Festival Fringe, Wendy Houston, Contemporary Dance (Dance)

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