Ian Abbott on dance at the 2026 Edinburgh Fringe: Raffle Tickets and Choreographic Bloat

I started writing about dance at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2016 and 10 years is like one of those raffle ticket moments. A year that ends in a 5 or a 0 is often deemed noteworthy, prizewinning or even a place to stop. So I decided to mark this anniversary by writing only about companies and artists I had never seen before, and seeing how they would stand up —or stand out — against the dozens of other works I have seen over the last decade at the Fringe. 

Let’s start with the one the audiences loved the most, the one which has the potential to be a commercially successful production with a 10-year lifespan at the Fringe and a West End transfer and the one that has so many possible franchise spinoffs it is almost a licence to print money.

Welcome to ‘I Made You A Mixtape’, the debut show by Response Theatre Company at The Space, which self-describes as: ‘Welcome to the party you always wished you were invited to. Step into the heart of a 90s college dorm hang, complete with live musicians and the greatest hits of the decade. Nine girls arrive for one last night together before their lives change forever. With each track played, we get a new glimpse into their world; through impromptu music videos, deep female friendships, and unfiltered emotion by the bucketload. This isn’t your typical dance show — it changes every night, with the girls’ fates being revealed to them, and you, in real time.’

Over the course of 12 songs in 50 minutes, the audience get to witness and vicariously re-live a fictional joy-filled night in a geographically unspecified girls college dorm. Each of the girls dance a solo to extremely familiar, radio friendly, 90s American soft rock like Blink 182, Meredith Brooke, Greenday and Alanis Morrisette. At the start of each show nine audience members are chosen to provide the emotional intention behind each solo via a handwritten sign — e.g. This is Tatiana and after 2nite…she breaks up with her partner, or she has her visa revoked etc.— and that emotional framing is only revealed to the performer (and the audience) when they hear the start of their track and see the sign.

Response Theatre Company, led by Christie Lee Manning, framed their production (and company) as the first Meisner-based movement theatre practice. I’m not here to go into a Meisner rabbit hole and its relationship to/with improvisation and choreographic attunement, but it’s not as pioneering a practice as the company might have you think. I Made You A Mixtape is 90s nostalgia coded. The girls get out the board game Dream Phone, their costumes are straight out of the Tammy Girl window display and they even bring a willing audience member on stage for a song midway through the show and dress them up with blow up musical instruments, wigs and some average wedding dancing,

But I felt there was something off with the contrivance and forced manifestation of joy. There’s a fine line between a performer trying to feel joy and one whose joy is visceral so that an audience can receive that joy and feel it. It can be any emotion, but joy is what Response Theatre Company is dealing in. For me, the joy pipe is broken; it leaked out somewhere and I didn’t feel that joy because it was artificially manufactured. Suddenly those feelings and emotions purported to be held by the performers felt cynical and my glow stick was waving limply in the final song.

As each solo and the group piece ‘The Routine’ demonstrated, the dancers can dance well. Choreographically, it will be familiar to a generation that grew up on early 2000s YouTube music videos and bedroom choreographies. Within each solo, the Meisner technique is activated and everyone who’s not dancing the solo is “responding” to the emotional framing, but I don’t connect with effortful displays of performance and attention-grabbing that essentially mask what a nuanced and grooved improvisatory or bodily listening practice could do better.

But as it stands, this work isn’t designed for a critical eye and that’s OK. It’s conjured squarely for a Saturday night, nostalgic, light entertainment audience who aren’t paying attention to the unevenness of the cast and who want to listen to some familiar music, sway their head and escape for 50 minutes. On its own terms it’s a rip-roaring success and I can see this becoming an Edinburgh staple like the 360 Allstars or The Black Blues Brothers.

Flipping over the C90 to another debut full-length show is ‘Stop Playing Jacob’s Ladder With My Spine (SPJLWMS)’ by HotCat Collective who were performing in the studio at ZOO Southside. They describe the show as: ‘There are ants in your drawers. There is food in your microwave. There is blood on the food. There are ants in the blood. They are watching you eat. You have a nosebleed.’ Blending absurdist theatre, contemporary dance and creative captioning, HotCat Collective present their new show about loss of control, expectations within domestic settings, and what it means to rot in the face of sterilisation. Four dancers and a microwave invite you to embrace chaos despite the prying eyes. Don’t hide. Come and see the beautiful colours on your mouldy fork.’

I watched this show at the end of a very good day in Edinburgh; I’d been to the Sauna Theatre (more on this later) for the first time to see Bubble Schmeisis (Remixed) by Nick Cassenbaum, was reading Decomposition Book by Sara van Os and had seen a VERY interesting work in progress from the Abbey Theatre in Dublin called Bulk which looked at the male relationship to gym culture, but told through documentary dance theatre using a street dance vocabulary and new electronic music. So HotCat received me in a positive mood and I came out of SPJLWMS even more exalted. I felt like they had created a stage world that captured the sense of emotional rot and sacred isolationism that Gen Z are experiencing; it was the first UK dance company that I’ve seen since the COVID pandemic that delivered an emotional and physical portrait of truth about what it’s like to have lived through these last 6 years as a young adult. 

This world was made up of exquisite poetic writing (spoken and also projected as captioning with some delicious typographical and motion graphic choices by Ted Fussell), an emotionally layered original electronic soundtrack (courtesy of Estuardo del Angel, Eve Boulos, Oli Spooner and Tom Warrilow), a microwave and some disgusting ready meals which left a choreographic residue on the floor as well as on their bodies. What’s interesting is that the choreography isn’t trying to be innovative or radical or outrageous, but it feels known, it matches the domestic and emotional environment that the other parts of the production support. 

One issue I have with the production is that there’s one performer (out of four) who is considerably weaker in technical dance execution and vocal delivery of the text; this almost keeps pulling me out of the world they create and I don’t think a demonstrably weaker performer was an intentional artistic or dramaturgical choice. It’s one of those tricky situations where each member of a collective adds so many ideas, nuances and layers to the creation and end product that the rightness of each person to perform the work is not assessed. But sometimes, for the good of the collective, you need to step back, look at it objectively and see what it is that the production really needs.

I am so excited to see what Hot Cat Collective do next (they’re currently working on ‘Nara’ — a choreographic duet investigating propaganda and the threat to shared queer spaces of safety). As I shared on Insta in the aftermath of the show, nothing in terms of dance had or did excite me more when SPJLWMS came to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2026 and I look forward to rotting with the cats in the future.

Woodhill by LUNG at ZOO Southside self describes as: ‘I dance in the horror of grief. Three men at Woodhill prison are dead. Their families demand answers. This is a call to arms about the crisis facing prisons. Gut-punching choreography and unflinching beats shine a light on the hidden story of HMP Woodhill. Lyrically told in their own words, three families investigate what happened to their boys. What they discover is so haunting, it turns their world upside down. Pushing the form of documentary theatre and dance, Woodhill is an explosive true story by multi-award-winning LUNG and originally developed with The North Wall.’

This is a remount of the original 2023 production,which landed in Edinburgh, garlanded with five stars from The Guardian, before it heads back out on a 20-date tour across England and Wales this autumn. As a piece of theatre, it was the worst thing I saw at this year’s Fringe. I cannot fathom how this production has so many 4-star and 5 Star reviews from legacy media publications. It’s so shiny (look at those nice Ikea bookcases and cardboard boxes), so empty (move some boxes, nothing happens, move some shelves, nothing happens, drop some sand, nothing happens) and so emotionless (what is going on with the acting voiceovers?). This is a work made for funding applications and venue programmers who buy a show on the politics of it without having seen it. 

This is not to deny that what happened to the three men and their families is horrific; the prison system should be abolished and the justice system is riddled with so much injustice. But the direction (by Matt Woodhead) and choreography (by Alexzandra Sarmiento) was so monotonous and so one note. I heard (and agreed with) multiple audience members around me who uttered the dreaded “this is GCSE dance” with the literal bland miming of movements to the verbatim words coming out from the speakers. Nothing in the direction, scenography, choreography, sound design or performance added any value, deepened my emotional connection or told a different part of the story. Woodhill did not need to be made.

International Aufguss Masters by Sauna Sessions Arts Club at the Sauna Theatre self describes as: ‘Experience the world’s greatest Aufguss artists right here in Edinburgh. Stunning choreography and extraordinary storytelling using steam and scent in a beautiful sauna theatre with state-of-the-art lighting and surround sound. Aufguss is a sauna ritual that circulates steam and scent through mesmeric towel waving as part of a story told through words, music, dance, scent and heat. Two different artists perform every day with line-ups announced in advance on sauna theatre socials, featuring world class Aufguss artists from across Europe and around the world. This is theatre to captivate all of your senses.”

The Sauna Theatre is a world first and an experiential wonder. The design of it is a collaboration between studio three sixty and Sauna Sessions Arts Club, a new venture founded by Lucy Osborne and James Grieve. Not only do you get 14 hours of immersive content (from morning raves to Nils Frahm crossovers to late night literary salons) programmed each day for an 80-seater theatre that is also a state-of-the-art sauna with full technical rig, but there are plunge pools, cold showers, changing rooms, lockers, a dry bar and a merch shed to ensure you feel comfortable getting in and out of each 90-minute sauna experience. 

After booking a £25 ticket for Nick Cassenbaum’s performance of Bubble Schmeisis (Remixed), and enjoying the experience of sweating with 16 other people for 60 minutes in my shorts, I thought I’d book in for another session — International Aufguss Masters — as I (with 26 others) was attracted by the hyperbole of “stunning choreography and extraordinary storytelling”. 

I’d never heard of the word Aufguss before August, but it translates roughly as: “a multi-sensory ritual inside the sauna lasting approximately 15 minutes. The Aufguss master works with water and a towel using techniques to circulate heat throughout the sauna.” There are six core elements which combine to create Aufguss:

• Heat
• Ice balls with essential oils
• Towel work
• Lighting/ambience
• Music
• Style

In the introduction to our session, Head of Sauna (what a wonderful title) Deborah Carr introduces Mark from the Czech Republic, who demonstrates a Modern Classic Aufguss, followed by a chance to leave the sauna, plunge, cool off and then come back for the UK Champion Kyle, who  demonstrates Show Aufguss and who will be taking this show to the World Aufguss Championships. 

Imagine a scented five-minute hybrid of the arm and shoulder work from waacking mixed with a pizza dough spinning towel played to a soft rock soundtrack. Towels are twisted, spun and wafted — single and double handed — and when a master is in front of you, you get a face full of fragrantly wafted wind. This is repeated three times over the 15 minutes, using different music and different scents. If I’m being generous I was somewhat underwhelmed by the “stunning choreography”; it was more of a technical demonstration (and maybe that’s what Modern Classic is) and there’s no doubt that Mark has an excellent wafting technique. Whilst I definitely won’t be going to the world championships, I was intrigued to find out at what level the UK is and what “extraordinary storytelling” is presented. Kyle attempted to tell a Hurricane Katerina story, chatting to his mother (recorded on the soundtrack) about preparing for the storm, battening down the hatches and waiting for the aftermath. There were cans of Bud Light, cheap props and a hand-written sign stuck to the sound booth which drooped half-way through the performance. If Woodhill was GCSE dance, then Kyle wasn’t even passing his GCSE drama exam. It was horrific in narrative, production quality and towel wafting technique. Literally anyone, on any other stage in Edinburgh, could have crafted a better 15-minute experience than Kyle with less than an hour’s notice.

If we’re in the early days of a better (theatre) nation with Sauna Theatre (the tipping point of Aufguss only really came about during COVID when a lot of people online began to share their towel tricks) it will take some time for artists to understand the specific demands and possibilities of Sauna Theatre and how it could genuinely work as a crafted theatrical experience, rather than a hot room with an under-qualified man making terribly inefficient attempts at wafting and acting.

There were a number of performances with pole dancers at the Fringe this year, so I went to see two of them – Poles by Corpo Maquina at Assembly @ Dance Base and DUSK/NIGHT/DAWN by VERTICAL DREAMSCAPE at Assembly Roxy.

Poles self describes as: ‘A performance by Corpo Máquina’s artistic director Guilherme Miotto for pole dance virtuoso Yvonne Smink. With a live soundscape from musician/composer Isaac Poels. Pole dancer Yvonne Smink won the Dutch pole dancing championships multiple times and is a rising star internationally. In Poles, Guilherme highlights Yvonne’s impressive technical strength and allows for joy to radiate from her no-nonsense appearance. With her down-to-earth approach and healthy blush, Yvonne makes her way through the steel pipe construction. At the cutting edge of personal and public space, she delivers chilling moments of physicality and intimacy.’

I agree with this part of the description only: ‘Yvonne makes her way through the steel pipe construction’ and that’s all that really happens for the duration of the show. It’s a technical demonstration of her strength, tricks, endurance and improvisatory skills on this particular spider-like scaffold apparatus. After booking the ticket in advance, I got a notice a few days before the performance which said: “Since you bought your tickets, the producers of the show have changed the show’s duration. The show duration was 60 minutes, the show duration is now 45 minutes. We don’t have any further information about why the duration has changed.” This wasn’t acknowledged by the venue, or the artist or in the programme and to lose a quarter of the advertised length (or not make it in the first place) is concerning and I’m unsure what Miotto did as an artistic director. Maybe he chose the luscious, blue reflective marley floor which I loved; when I was zoning out, it was actually more interesting to watch the upside down reflection of Smink duetting with herself above and below the floor line.

The other part which was concerning was the relationship between Poels and Smink; I was watching Poels throughout and he barely looked up from his modular synthesiser throughout the show and didn’t have any sort of connection; he was just composing his music in complete isolation. There was no need for him to be a live presence on the stage. It would have been more sonically interesting to just hear the grip and friction sounds from Smink as she slides, grabs and holds onto the scaffold with different parts of her body.

DUSK/NIGHT/DAWN self describes as: ‘An experimental aerial pole dance explosion performed by NYC collective VERTICAL DREAMSCAPE, featuring US Pole Art Champion Donna Carnow and interdisciplinary artist Gina Alm. DUSK/NIGHT/DAWN follows a pole-dancer through a night of work as her craft and identity dissolve into a montage of cinematic and sensual, dark yet dazzling dream worlds. This high-octane, durational work pushes the performers’ bodies and minds to the limit, producing a powerful, visceral and transcendent product that feels vibrant, textured, unpredictable, and of an alien world.” 

The technical skill and bodily contortions of Carnow are sensational; she is pushing at the edges and expectations of what a body can do whilst upside down, in the air, and lightly connected via a single limb, hand or knee crease to the flying pole. What she does sits somewhere between circus, gymnastics, tricking and dance and I agree with this part: “dissolve into a montage of cinematic and sensual, dark yet dazzling dream worlds.” DUSK/NIGHT/DAWN is a six-scene montage in search of a narrative; it’s predictable, in as much as we know that each scene will start with a light prop/concept (red balloons, ink etc.) and end up with either Carrow or Alm — or both — backlit on the pole doing moves so fast that it’s hard to appreciate the craft it takes to transition from one pose to the other and hold it. 

I am not someone who appreciates mere technical exhibition and DUSK/NIGHT/DAWN and Poles attempt to bring something else to the table, in terms of dramaturgy or narrative, but it’s so weak that it needs to be re-framed to ensure it doesn’t speak in such wanky and alienating marketing hyperbole as: “a powerful, visceral and transcendent product that feels vibrant, textured, unpredictable, and of an alien world”, or “At the cutting edge of personal and public space, she delivers chilling moments of physicality and intimacy.”

Good Enough? By HIMHERANDIT was part of #DANISH in the Main Hall at Summerhall and this is how they self-describe: ‘From the critically acclaimed, award-winning company behind Mass Effect and Champions comes a brand-new performance celebrating imperfection, queer joy and the courage to find your tribe. Good Enough? is a queer, quirky and boisterous physical theatre performance about reclaiming your story and having the courage to be loud, awkward and unapologetically yourself. This is not a show about perfect bodies or polished dancers. It’s about the instinct to move, to express and to be seen — especially when language isn’t enough.”

This is an ode to Paola Drera, one of the three performers in Good Enough? She is the one dancer at the Fringe this year that has that magnetic performance sauce, the kind that you know after watching her for less than a minute, where you just can’t stop watching that one performer amongst the wider cast; it’s not because the other cast members are bad, but she is undeniably good. Good Enough? is sat somewhere between a historical confessional about the personal inadequacies of the three performers and a competitive audition for our (audience) attention and validation. Directed by Andreas Constantino, it’s a neatly constructed, emotionally manipulative (in a good way) and well-paced work where the audience cannot not root for the performers who share childhood photographs, the best and worst bits of themselves and why this trio — as a chosen family — is so important to them.

Drera has the holy trinity of: emotional truth, stage presence and technical delivery. I believed what she was saying and her body authentically matched her words, and the grooved craft required to know how to connect with an audience so we feel safe was nestled right to her wonderful technical foundation. Paola Drera: you are good enough.

There’s a whole set of other dance work that I saw including: Ham Sandwiches and Discipline by NAF Dance, Bigger by Compagnie CHAABANE, Jerk Off! By Nadia P Manzoor, Exit by Circumstances and Proximities by LEI Dance Theatre which are part of the Edinburgh bloat — an ever-expanding average middle and conceptually beige programme that offers perfectly serviceable but instantly forgettable dance work. This is the reality of what’s happening in a festival which broke records with a total of 4,202 registered shows across nearly 300 venues. 

Bigger does not equal better, so after 21 shows this year and over 150 across the decade, consider this a pause to my writing about dance at the Fringe in Edinburgh; it’s no longer relevant and I don’t want to spend my time amongst the choreographic bloat.