Review by Iliyana Nedkova

Here we go ‘round the young oak tree on a cold and sprightly morning at Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Garden. This resilient seven-year-old Portuguese oak, the centrepiece of our al fresco traditional dance, music and art session, is likely to outlive us and the biodiversity crisis, just like the fabled mulberry bush from the nursery rhyme. 

Led by four dancers from the Edinburgh-based dance group Italian Folk Connections, including Lara Russo and Inesa Vėlavičiūtė and four Italo Scot dance musicians on tambourine, guitar, recorder, concertina, double base and voice (Alessandro Parlato, Michele Quarta, Francesca Cassis and Simone Caffari), we gather to experience and participate in circle folk dances and tunes that had accompanied the dances for the last thousand years in Italy’s Southern regions of Puglia and Campania.  

Passers-by, seagulls and aficionados alike stop in their tracks to admire the first display of Pizzica Pizzica ‘round the oak while the sunlight filters briefly through the nearby mighty trees. This energetic and playful frolic soon picks up pace as if chasing evil spirits. There is something feverish but not frivolous in each gesture. We witness the healing ritual of Tarantism, offering relief from the bite of a Tarantula – a lore first recorded in 11th Century Italy, yet befitting our understanding of wellbeing, public health and participatory arts today. 

Audiences yearning for more are rewarded with an invitation to step into the oak circle and follow Lara and Inesa’s sway and spidery grace, accentuated by their red scarves and long hair flowing over their black dresses. A slight change in the cathartic rhythm of the tambourine and castanets signals the transition to Tammurriata and Tarantella, rituals that unite us. A gentleman in a wheelchair reinvents them as seated dances for two hands and eyes, darting around like butterflies.

Usually enjoyed during family gatherings and town festivals, it is no coincidence that these folk dances feel at home being performed at this year’s Edinburgh Art Festival, all around the new permanent commission Around a Tree by the Colombian art foundation Más Arte Más Acción. The installation features a circular table with speakers transmitting the voices of leading climate scientists, and logs for seats, crafted from local trees affected by dieback. This creates a dialogue of socially-engaged contemporary art with an intrinsically-social participatory dance, with us as active contributors to a round-table discussion about the past and future of our shared planet, and ultimately about the healing power of the arts.

*

Held on 17 August 2024 as part of Edinburgh Art Festival, this participatory dance event was curated by Traditional Dance Forum of Scotland in collaboration with Más Arte Más Acción and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh as part of the #traddance campaign for increasing the visibility of Scottish and world trad dance during the Edinburgh summer festivals.

This review is published by Traditional Dance Forum of Scotland as part of our Traditional Dance Criticism Course, led by dance writer and editor Róisín O’Brien and supported by dance scholar and editor Dr Wendy Timmons.

Iliyana Nedkova joined the six applicants – Vassia Bouchagiar-Walker, Yuxi Jiang, Catherine Coutts, Alena Shmakova, Inesa Vėlavičiūtė and Yanmei Bowie, who were selected to participate in this pilot edition of the course in 2024 – to review shows with trad dance roots across the Edinburgh’s summer festivals. 

Images courtesy of Iliyana Nedkova and Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

Please find further details about our #traddance campaign at Edinburgh summer festivals here