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Angus MacKechnie, Jacksons Lane’s Creative Director, reports back from Edinburgh…

I hadn’t been to the Edinburgh Fringe in decades, so arriving back this August was quite a shock. It is bigger, busier and considerably more intense than I remember (or maybe I’m just a bit older and a bit more fragile!) and circus now feels like a major part of the festival rather than something sitting slightly on the edge.

I spent five days trying to see as much of it as I could, running between Underbelly, Assembly, Pleasance, Zoo and a few smaller spaces along the way. 31 shows in five days.

At Underbelly’s Circus Hub, Japanese company Cirquework’s YOAH was a big, bold mix of diabolo, aerial, acrobatics and projection, performed with terrific technical skill. At the other end of the scale, OLO Company’s Soft Spot at Zoo Southside used just two performers, wine glasses and broken glass to create something intimate, precise and genuinely tense.

Aloft’s The Pieces used metal ladders to create constantly changing structures for balancing, climbing and aerial work, while The Freestyle Orchestra’s Tale of the Firebird combined classical music, acrobatics and fire, with the performers playing instruments while doing circus. A violinist who also happens to be a fire-eater is not something I encounter every week.

The French Institute showcase also produced a small gem in °Up: Violin vs Football, an inventive duet between a violinist and a footballer, constantly swapping skills and roles.

There was plenty of international work. Cirque Kalabanté’s Afrique en Cirque brought acrobatics, live music and drumming together in a lively celebration of Guinean culture.

Afronauts by Circus Zambia and Wake the Beast was one of the shows that stayed with me most. It tells the extraordinary true story of Zambia’s attempt to launch its own space programme in the 1960s, around the time of independence, with almost no resources but enormous optimism and belief. The company folded that story into circus with warmth, humour and a wonderful sense of community. It was rough around the edges in places, but completely distinctive and full of heart; grumpy tumbling cats were a particular highlight. The ambition of the performers and of the space mission programme seemed to mirror each other beautifully: people pushing themselves towards something that might just be impossible.

One of the company, John Mputu, has also secured a place at the National Centre for Circus Arts and is currently fundraising to support his training, so they are definitely a company I will to keep an eye on.

I also caught Below Zero’s PACE, a witty Scandinavian hand-to-hand duet, Vertical Dreamscape’s aerial pole show DUSK/NIGHT/DAWN, the Black Blues Brothers and Hong Kong artist Flowlaiyee’s No Tricks No No Tricks, using Cyr wheel and object manipulation. Smile was a imaginative and playful telling of Charlie Chaplin’s life from cradle to grave, both tender and political in its outlook.

And, slightly outside my circus brief, Marc Brew Company’s Boys Don’t Dance was one of the highlights of the week. A duet for a wheelchair-using dancer and non-disabled dancer, it mixes contemporary dance, storytelling, an irresistible 80s soundtrack and BMX. Funny, generous and beautifully performed, it also showed how close dance, physical theatre and circus can sometimes sit alongside one another.

There was plenty for younger audiences too.

Splash Test Dummies Circus was proper knockabout circus fun: German wheel, juggling, acrobatics, water and quite a lot of silliness. FoRT by Asking For Trouble transformed everyday household objects into forts, mountains and boats, with stilts, acrobatics, hand balance and even rola bola on an upside-down ironing board.

Spencer Jones’s Experimental Kids Show was anarchic, surreal and completely unpatronising, while Hugo Grrrl’s Rainbow Show brought drag, storytelling, weather and some spectacular costumes together for a very young audience. Tweedy’s Massive Solo Show was another reminder of just how much craft sits behind really good clowning. Fun, inventive and gloriously daft. For babies and toddlers, Hello Birds created a gentle sensory garden full of nests, food and things to discover… and birds.

Not everything I saw will be right for Jacksons Lane, of course. Part of Edinburgh is seeing the full range of what is being made at many different scales, discovering new artists and companies and finding something unexpected.

And then, on my final day, By a Thread.

Australian company One Fell Swoop Circus use a single rope system to create an hour of ensemble circus, finding what feels like every possible variation within it. The company are extraordinarily slick but never at the expense of warmth or playfulness, with technical surprises throughout and a real sense of joy between the performers.

After five days, my notebook was full, my step count was alarming and there are plenty of artists and companies to follow up with.

But after decades away from Edinburgh, the greatest surprise was just how much circus there now is, and how visible, international and varied it has become.

And, very happily, By a Thread is already on its way to Jacksons Lane very soon! (Book here).

Angus MacKechnie | Creative Director | Jacksons Lane