‘Deserving of a main-stage season’: The first Fringe festival reviews are in

DANCE Caroline Meaden | Immacolata Chunky Move Studios, until October 3

This is a beautifully strange and melancholy solo dance vigil: a restless choreographic grisaille, delicate and disquieting. Caroline Meaden struts and frets, with crisp bird-like movements, then hesitates. Always there is hesitation in this work. Then an arm – or a hand or a leg – begins to wobble. It’s like a part of the body just turns to water.

The dimly lit stage is furnished with only a clothes rack, some biscuit crumbs and a stool, but Meaden keeps mostly to its edges. She is pulled backwards or drawn into the corners, as if kept out of the empty centre by some unseen force.

Immacolata tantalises with the mystery of its significance. What does it all mean? Is there a story behind its troubling silences? In fact, Meaden provides an accompanying essay, intended to be read after the performance, which does explain much of what we see – and gives the work’s air of sadness a touching specificity. ★★★★ Reviewed by Andrew Fuhrmann

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