Skip to main content

Liz Aggiss performs "The English Channel" dance show at Edinburgh Fringe 2016 - a Review

English Channel

If there is one show in the Festival that each village hall in Cornwall would probably embrace its this iconoclastic dance and burlesque show.  But would we dare ?  For adults over 16 (the audience I saw it with had belly laughing 20s, 30s)  and everything on the upper side of 60 cheered her to the rooftops.  Partly relief from trepidation about what she will do next!

There is elegy...we have a rendition of Dido's lament....there is farce....great footage of Florence Foster Jenkins in full  "con belto" rendition of The Queen of the Night aria  ...there is head banging rock rage.....there is tribute to the early lady swimmers and glorious archive film of the great Edwardian yachts most of all there is the demonic headless-chicken shaped anarchic dancer Liz Aggiss.

This piece is dangerous.  If you are easily shocked don't book it.   Be warned, there are some glorious F words (unapologetic) but nuanced and a dance with what looked to me like a large primitive dildo.  The premise is that, at 60, what have we got to lose ...let it all hang out and be proud of the experience we can offer.  A dance show of great power and commitment from the always poised and fiery Liz Aggiss.

A one woman show with a difference.  A strong dose of the macabre, with unexplained drive and energy.  Go and see this show before she quits it!

27.08.2015
by Tim Smithies

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Yulia Chaplina plays 3 concerts in Cornwall: Programme Gerrans Friday 20th, Mylor Saturday 21st and Penzance Sunday 22nd June 2025

    Concert Programme     Penzance   Methodist Church Sunday 22 nd June 2025  tickets buytickets.at/metronome Yulia Chaplina   - pianoforte Bagatelles Op. 119                                                                                            Beethoven G minor   A minor   Impromptus Op. 90                                 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Shahnemeh by Adverse Camber at Perranporth Memorial Hall

An enthralling evening of music and storytelling from Persia presented by Adverse Camber at Perranporth Village Hall on Carn to Cove Saturday 17th March 2018  I only had a vague knowledge of the epic poem The Shahnameh (the Book of Kings)   as a critical work in Persian/Iranian culture......but the evening in Perranporth Memorial Hall  that Adverse Camber presented their show of the stories and the music of that world brought all sorts of insights, exotic worlds and memories.  The hall was thronging ...evidently Persian storytelling a subject to draw Cornish audiences on a cold March evening.   Two performers,  Xanthe Gresham Knight, a storyteller, and Arash Moradi, musician conjured the exotic and dazzling world of the Persian Book of Kings.    The stories were collected and written over thirty years  at around 1000 AD by the poet Ferdowsi and the epic poem consist of 50000 lines of verse in rhyming couple...
Post a Comment
Read more

Cornwall Cello Voices

Friday 7th February 2020 Truro Catholic Church Cello Voices. Liz Brazier - widely regarded as the mother of cellists  in Cornwall  as Barbara Degener, the ensemble leader , called her at the close of this concert, has for some years run a cello weekend in the new year where cellists of all ages and abilities meet to work  and play together.   (she is actually the mother of Ben Hoagley one of the other performers - and celebrated a significant birthday today) Cornwall Cello Voices is a group of  eight of the rather more accomplished performers who have given concerts at the end of the weekend.   The sound of 8 cellos playing together in harmony is thrilling as recordings by the cellist of the Berlin Philharmonic in the 90s attest.  And this concert was certainly extremely well delivered with ensemble and balance between a frequent myriad of parts well judged. The cello's sonorous register makes it a favourite with many but the compar...
Post a Comment
Read more