Chapter 245: Three Little Words for Kook Ensemble’s SAND at the Edinburgh Fringe

It’s Sunday, and before I move on to writing about the Palestinian Circus I saw yesterday, I need to go back a step. I’ve just been walking on the Common, trying to make a little space for reflection. I could be at church; I could be in a pub in Islington for an evening in tribute to Glen Hansard. Instead, after a wonderful afternoon at Jacksons Lane with friends and family seeing Revel Pucks (another post to follow), I need some quiet and some nature.

The sun catches the pond, making two globes of light: a little Sun God worship, Akhnaten-style. On the Pray As You Go podcast, Ladysmith Black Mambazo are singing “Uthando Olungaka, What a Great Love”, joyful music that takes me back to Paul Simon’s Graceland, which I played endlessly as a teenager. And from there my mind wanders, as it does: back to Akhnaten, to Gandini Juggling, to balls tracing the air like the notes of Glass’s opera, to the flow of philosophy and memory in Phelim McDermott’s Tao of Glass (click here).

I think of the universe; I think of the great Love that connects us all; and for a moment I feel the warm glow that everything is all right. Except, of course, it isn’t. Look at Gaza. The world is on fire. But the podcast is asking whether hardship, persecution, peril or distress can disconnect us from the Infinite Source. No, I think not, though it may feel that way. That is my credo, anyway.

Gradually, as my feet follow the familiar path across the dried-up, thirsty Common, the monkey mind quietens. I am simply there: watching light move through the leaves, ducklings gliding towards their nest, tufts of long grass pushing through the sandy soil. And suddenly I am back in Kook Ensemble’s Sand, which I returned to see at Jacksons Lane on Friday. A voice pops into my head: you love it; you’ve got to write about it some more. I owe so much to these shows, to circus. God only knows what I’d be without you...cue the track from the show.

But what can I add to what has already been said? I've already caught the essence in my previous post (see Chapter 225 - click here), which celebrates the tenderness between a married couple, the bond of romantic love and the joy of shared memories, while delivering the sucker punch to the gut as the wife loses herself in the windmill of her mind. 

But the thing is, the show has changed a year on. How? Co-director Sean Kempton asked me afterwards. Like a river, whose course is the same but the water has changed. What did I actually notice? I reach. The sloping dune has gone for a start, I say. And there's more marram grass?! Maybe I notice it more this time as I've seen the explanatory video on Kook Ensemble's Instagram. The grass is "the quiet hero of the coastline, helping to trap sand and stabilise the dunes". It struck me this time round as a powerful metaphor for the memories that take root despite the shifting sands of dementia. The performers? Dilly Taylor and Myles MacDonald play the older couple, Alvaro Grande and Ebony Gumbs the younger version. Well, I saw this show a year ago, they will have gone on their own journeys with the characters they play since then. I can't pinpoint what has changed exactly there either, choreography aside from the modifications to the set, but there is a texture. Maybe because it has been a while since I have seen a contemporary circus show like this, I was even more struck by the force of the circus skills in conveying the narrative, and by how powerful that physical language can be as a medium. It was all more heightened for me.

There is the gentle irony as Myles switches between radio stations and vinyl. There is the comedy of Alvaro’s supermarket courtship, juggling the contents of his basket as the scanner’s sound effects become the pulse of racing romance. Then Dilly and Ebony mirror one another in deftly synchronised acrobatics, drawing Alvaro into their play, while Myles remains on the outside looking in. This is a projection of Dilly’s inner world, and she is becoming lost inside it.

It had an even greater emotional impact on me this time. It felt more poignant. Carina Simões, the producer, was right to warn me as I took my seat to brace myself for the journey, and for the tears. It brought more to the surface. 

Maybe the shift is also because I've changed too. I'm more vulnerable. Since the last show, I've lost my Mum and the companionship of the couple makes me think of Dad, who had gone ahead of her, and I like to think was there waiting for her on the other side with his lightness of being. I'm not the only one to have experienced the twitching blinds, the flickering bulbs, the uncanny coincidences in the immediate days that followed. Mum and Dad had lived in Devon, where Sand takes root, bringing up a young family. They loved that coastline and I brought these ghosts with me this time. Kook Ensemble have thought about this too. For anyone affected by what the show brings to the surface, there is literature to take away afterwards, space for discussion and signposts towards further support.

There are also other performances I have seen recently that now echo here. Last weekend, at Certain Blacks’ Ensemble Festival at the Royal Docks, I saw a Gujarati performance called Garbh. The theme was different, but again there were dancers moving energetically across a sandscape, wheeling through the space, sifting sand through their fingers. Their skirts whirled like the balls of sand Myles juggles at the end of Sand, before the balls ultimately disintegrate. The skirts and the movement of the dancers reminded me in turn of the contemporary dance of Aakash Odedra, a Sufi whirling dervish, in The Song of the Bulbul, which I saw recently at Sadler’s Wells East, a soul-awakening performance. That is another story. It all comes back to The Infinite Circle. The revolving vinyl Myles places on the record player. The giant turntable in Tao of Glass, on which Phelim McDermott is spun around in a coma while Glass’s Steinway pours out music, trying to reach into his state, just as Myles is trying to reach into his wife’s consciousness.

Then there is the feather balancing in Sand, so beautiful. A moment of delicate, slow-motion juggling that conveys the gravity of loss through fragility. It took me back to watching DOMTE, by Catalan circus artist Nacho Flores, again at the Ensemble Festival. Nacho balances heavy wooden blocks in a high-stakes structure, and although the materials are different, there were parallels. My neighbour on the bench started telling me about the Cirque du Soleil feather act he had seen, which blends both ideas. The feather is the final element, its light touch at the very tip holding the whole construction in balance. I saw the original Sanddorn act once at the Edinburgh Fringe, the same principle at play, an entire precarious tower brought down, plummeting, by a single plume. It was part of a poetic contemporary circus show Wings of the Heart - click here by Swiss company Rigolo Nouveau Cirque, which I believe was later bankrupted by the tour. The final feather. And my heart goes out to all these performing arts companies that invest so much, taking such risks, to enrich the lives of others, bringing sense to the world, and making sense of it, through their art.

I had come with friends, and Sand made a huge impression on them too. Their son, a university student and a hugely talented, creative artist, asked me afterwards, “Do you think it’s too late for me to join the circus world?” Of course not. There is so much ahead of him. They were so moved by the show that they booked to see Revel Pucks with us on Sunday.

I also found myself catching up with folk from the circus world. Tamzen Moulding, whom I have known for years, introduced me to Craig West, who did the lighting for the show, framing the action so beautifully alongside Pete Buffery’s tech and soundscape. Perhaps I was especially alert to those contributions after all the behind-the-scenes insights my niece Fly had given me into Tao of Glass, and after meeting its lighting designer, Colin Grenfell, whose work I had admired so much.

Tamzen also told me about the Palestinian Circus coming to Soho Theatre Walthamstow for one weekend only. Oh God, I thought, just when I had imagined a Saturday breather between shows. Clearly that was not going to happen. Circus every damn day.

Meanwhile, co-director Michaela O’Connor was gathering audience reactions on camera. I was half-tempted to dodge her, much to Tamzen and Craig’s amusement. I struggle with that kind of spontaneity. I dry up. But either I caught myself or Michaela caught me, and I managed a few sentences. Later, once I had had time to reflect, I realised it was very simple really.

Do. Not. Miss.

Sand is on at the Edinburgh Fringe in the Main Hall of Summerhall Arts 6-17 August (not 12 August)

Book tickets here: https://festival.summerhallarts.co.uk/events/sand/

Lead photo credit: Roy Riley www.thelowry.com
Website: www.kookensemble.com  @kook_ensemble on Instagram