Runners from Cirk La Putyka is a perfect fringe cocktail. It’s a mixture of dance, music and circus centred on an improbable prop: a giant treadmill long enough to take a few strides, and just about wide enough to accommodate a few people if they squeeze together.
Four immediately likable dance and circus performers recount personal stories and reflect on the experience of time. How come, when you’re speeding down a steep hill on your bike at the age of eight, everything becomes still? Why do we rush through everything in our adult lives? What does the blunt disruption of an injury mean for someone whose life revolves around the frantic speed of the circus?
These verbal musings morph into simple, committed physical illustrations on and off the treadmill. The performers push past each other on their way somewhere apparently important; the inevitable drag of the machine is resisted as though it were death itself; a technician toys with the treadmill’s speed, testing the performers’ resilience and creativity.
An emotionally heightened score performed by two musicians using violin, keys, guitar and voice cocoons the performers’ negotiations with each other and the treadmill. The choreographed movement is expressive rather than flamboyantly acrobatic, although there is an amazing feat of symbiotic human and object engineering involving a Cyr wheel.
I won’t give the ending away. It escalates in a way you might not immediately expect, allowing you to share in the performers’ determination to give that one last inch of yourself, just when you think you can’t. You’ll find yourself cheering.
• At Zoo Southside, Edinburgh, until 28 August.
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