RED SHOES till 27 August.

Edinburgh 2007 Fringe.

RED SHOES.
devised, directed and choreographed by Michael Popper & Kally Lloyd-Jones.

Zoo Southside, 117 Nicolson St.
To 27 August 2007.
Every day. 18:30.
Runs 52mins. No interval.

TICKETS. 0131 662 6892 or Fringe BO 0131 226 0000.
www.chordelia.co.uk
Review Thelma Good 22 August 2007.

Text, dance and aerial work.
There’s an upholstered chair with red shoes perched on its high back, a wee folding screen and organ music swells. A wild eyed girl peers over the screen, sees the shoes and is pulled irresistibly towards them as if they were magnets that called to her soles. Her legs never stop dancing and she finds herself up in air as her feet fit themselves into the dancing shoes.

Kally Lloyd-Jones not only dances and uses an aerial wire, she speaks, talks to us and to her aged fierce dancing mistress who tells her when she says she is frightened, “Get used to it”. Using Hans Christian Andersen’s story and the Powell-Pressburger musical which starred Moira Shearer as inspirations The Red Shoes explores the pressures of being an artist and a woman, of trying to have two lives.

Sometimes she is scolded and bullied by the older woman or waiting in the wings to go on she tells us how she hates this bit or has forgotten the steps. Yet and still she dances in a variety of styles, on point shoes, bare foot, in high heel shoes or soft pumps, on the stage and up in the air to a range of music.

Michael Popper and Lloyd-Jones’ exploration of text, dance and aerial work is an interesting development. Sometimes the piece works well but it needs a more intimate setting than that available in this Fringe auditorium, where most of the audience is separated from the dancer by the original balcony of the church just above the stage. It’s also rather long and the character of the dancer becomes wearing to listen to, when she whines about being torn between partner and dancing, about the demands of being female and human.

But The Red Shoes is humorous as well as making clear how trapped an artist can be by their own talent and desire to do their art. Cut ten minutes off and it could be a tighter piece, though when there is a solo performer that may not be so easy to arrange. No one can dance and perform aerial work without some short breaks of more gentle movement in a near hour slot for a solo dancer.

Company: Company Chordelia ( Scotland ).

All roles : Kally Lloyd-Jones.

2007-08-24 08:20:26