Innovations Contemporary Dance Platform Returns to Edinburgh For November

Innovations Contemporary Dance Platform (Innovations) - which showcases the best in new work from choreographers and dance artists working across Scotland and beyond - is back at The Studio at Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, for two nights only.

Get set for four short dance works which speak to themes ranging from workplace pressures and burnout, to cultural identity, and to intimate stories of desire and fractured relationships.

For this edition, Jack Webb (Scotland) presents In Endless Edge (in development), featuring performers Melissa Heywood and Catriona O'Connor. Rumbling under the surface of two bodies are impulses of desire, both longing to give in to movement impulses, rhythms and textures. The two bodies in the work are considered as edges - edges where physical desires are never realised; edges where endless space and flow start and end from. It will explore the spaces between bodies and people, the things that go unsaid and unexpressed, and the endless search for clarity,communication and connection when two edges meet - or don't.

Dorine Mugisha (Scotland) treats audiences to Joy (extract), featuring musician/performer Marie Gabrielle Koumenda, and performers Kiki Oladapo and Kemono L Riot. Using movement through Krump, House and Whacking, alongside live violin, the performance celebrates sisterhood and brotherhood, and unpacks growing up with Black hair. A mix of raw emotion, playful rebellion and celebration, it explores perceptions of cultural identity both inside the home and out in the world. The work is primarily aimed at younger people, with development previously supported through Imaginate (producer of Edinburgh International Children's Festival).

We journey into the workplace with choreographers and performers Jessica Castellón and Boris Orihuela (Spain) who deliver Current Accounts. This dance duet explores the emotional and physical limits to which the workplace can push us - all with humour and visceral intensity. Blending urban dance, contemporary movement and physical theatre, the work reflects on our obsessions with success at work, personal sacrifice, loss of identity, and ultimately the dehumanisation within a system that turns work life into a series of empty transactions. Composer: Eugenio Parra Guarino and Boris Orihuela, Lighting Designer: Arian Araujo and Alba Postigo.

Choreographers and performers Adrian Thömmes and Mariona Vinyes Ràfols (The Netherlands) round-up the edition with two people in a room, 2022. Performed by Mariona Vinyes Ràfols and Filippo Gualandris, something is lost, or perhaps broken, between the two characters on stage. The duet unfolds in movement, partnering, dialogues and gestures. The work takes inspiration from the intimate relationships of characters crafted in films directed by Aki Kaurismäki and Wong Kar- Wai; in the everyday stories of relationships written in Haruki Murakami's Men without Women; and a number of photographs capturing intimacy, held by the Magnum Photo Archive. Composer: Jeremy Delorme.

Produced in Edinburgh by Dance Horizons, Innovations remains as one of the UK's largest, independent and annual dance platforms outside of London. Now in its eleventh year, the 8th Platform event supports artists in their journey, using it as a springboard to secure further opportunities, funding and recognition. Innovations is supported by the National Lottery through Creative Scotland.

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