Edinburgh Fringe 2026
Low Down
Using the body as my medium, I explore life and identity. I try to find my own place within the crowd and let go of unnecessary labels. I want to break down a disciplined body and cross its boundaries to discover a comfortable, natural way of dancing. We twist and tighten ourselves, hoping to become completely clear.
Review
Choreographed and presented by Chinese dancer Xiaowei Ren, now based in London, Spiral is an experimental dance piece. Influenced by postmodern dance, Ren is interested in exploring identity, social conditioning, and the resilience of life.
Strewn around the stage at the start of this piece are approximately fifty plastic bottles of unbranded water. Ren gives a verbal introduction to the piece in a very gentle volume that is hard to hear, sadly. Then in silence, she walks around, through and across the bottles with graceful steps. She swings bottles in curved outstretched arms delicately stepping or tiptoeing through the bottles. She begins to tease a bottle or two by rolling them, pushed by her heels.
A rhythmic tapping soundscape begins after a few minutes and Ren begins to order and organise the bottles into straight lines. When music becomes even more rhythmic she sways and curves her body in interesting fluid shapes. She grabs her long plaits several times outstretching them, following through with a proud facial expression for the first half of the thirty five minute dance piece. While the meaning of an abstract experimental dance piece may not need to be completely understood, what is clear is that Ren is an outstanding dancer with an intriguing fluidity in her vocabulary of unusual movement motifs. Ren integrates a recognisable acrobatic move and a couple of classical ballet positions into the middle of the piece, which are witty additions! Continuing to walk around the lines of bottles, to carry them and to reorder them she seems to be exploring qualities of balance and imbalance. The tick tock sound of the melodic soundscape brings a new relationship with the bottles – or is it the water as a changing and essential resource of life? Her facial expression is more natural now and she struts like a runway model, and then does large graceful curvy movements with changes of levels and directions.
As much as the quality of Ren’s movement and presence is very compelling and highly accomplished, Ren would benefit from clarifying the written descriptions of this show in all publications and evaluating the structure of the performance. Additionally, much of the focus of this performance is on the floor and the sight lines in the space are very challenging, unless one sits in the front row. Nevertheless, this show will certainly appeal to those interested in experimental postmodern dance by a very talented dancer.
