DICE Festival Edinburgh Fringe Review

DICE Festival Review DICE Festival is an artist-led festival. Each night, six acts are given a corresponding side of a die. The die is rolled six times and this determines which acts are performed and how many times. Each act stands to perform up to six times, or not at all. Each artist is paid a standard fee. DICE festival ran 16th-18th August at Summerhall, and was curated and organised by Becky Plotnek, Colette Patterson and Kaiya Waerea. Read Lilith Wozniak’s review from the [[16th August]] Read Ben Kulvichit’s review from the [[18th August]] (set: $LilithOne to 'There is a magician’s saying; ‘the first time is a trick, the second is a demonstration’. I wonder how many times Tom Cassini would have to repeat his performance before we work out what he is doing. How long it would take Martina Dolcimascolo’s words to turn into a meditative haze. How long it would take for Moa Johanssons’ muscles to give out and her to fall to the floor. Before it does I wonder how the repetition of Lucia Pazzini’s how lovely is love will affect the willingness of volunteers to take part now they know what they will be doing. How people will react to the reveal of the cable when they know what is coming. (When it does repeat Pazzini has subtly shifted the act to change both of these elements – the reveal no longer a reveal, the audience members picked out by hand).') (set: $LilithTwo to 'I think about expectation and precedent. How so much live art is firmly rooted in repetition. How DICE introduces the possibility of repetition into pieces which were (mostly) not supposed to have it. Whether it is using repetition in the same way as those other pieces. I think similarly during Tom Cassani’s i promise you that tonight. It uses magic to tease the possibility of risk, of harm, of blood on the soles of his feet. Part of the beauty of it in a live art context is the extent to which those practices exist within the form – we’re not sure if we’re about to be tricked or shocked.') (set: $LilithThree to 'Imagining the event before I got there as a more formal ‘show’ with audience in lines of seating and acts quickly following after each other several things* became much clearer once I got there. The form was more a cross between a cabaret and a very chill party, with acts not starting for a while after the official start time, the audience standing or sitting on the floor, audience participation between the acts and a mid-evening interval. As someone who came alone with a dead phone this wasn’t exactly ideal for me, and (though I may be projecting) the middle of the fringe timing, and the fact one of the few other live art events at the Fringe finished at 5 that morning meant the crowd felt a little subdued, this form really made sense for DICE, bringing the playfulness of the conceit into its execution. *Why is it so long? What on earth is the Library Gallery?') (set: $LilithFour to 'There was a glorious mishmash of tones both among the individual pieces and in the overall event itself. The event itself balanced waywardly between incredibly sleek (a highlight being an incredibly impressive 3D sign) and a kind of bit-shit-on-purpose postmodern shambolic vibe (with performers names being written messily on the wall and a couple of awkward pauses as performers got ready). On the part of performances they ranged from mysterious to comic, pumped up to meditative, text-based to silent. By luck our night seemed to shape itself perfectly, with the intensity of Cassini’s piece leading into the interval and the night ending on the energy high and incredibly fun the boy worshipping heels by bolly-illusion. I do wonder how we would have felt wondering out into the night leaving the stillness and tension of Johansson’s piece.') (set: $LilithFive to 'There was a lovely sense of anticipation felt by seeing the performers in their costumes throughout the night. This particularly applied to Johansson; while at first I thought she was just wearing very strange high heels I gradually realised she had flowers taped to her feet, meaning she had to stand forward on her toes to stop from crushing them, something to become key to her piece. Knowing that this test of endurance in the performance leaked out across the rest of the night made it even more interesting and intriguing.') (set: $LilithSix to 'It feels wrong to pick favourites from such a wide range of performances but the ones that held me most tightly were Moa Johansson’s louder, she said what (another version) and Tom Cassini’s i promise you that tonight. While very different performances both demanded our total attention on the performers and displayed levels of physical skill or difficulty – Cassini’s in illusion, and a climax where he walks over broken glass and Johansson’s in keeping standing as she strains against and twists into a piece of fabric held by the audience, balancing on her toes and carrying two glasses of water. They were both the kind of performances that triggered my most excited theatre response – trying to describe the whole thing in precise detail to my long-suffering friends.') (set: $BenOne to 'Some STATS from Hamish the Statistician, invited by hosts Sh!t Theatre to commentate on the night, and helpfully corroborated for this review by my mathematician friend because I forgot to take notes: At the beginning of the night, the probability that an artist will get to perform at least once is 66.5% If an artist does not get to perform at DICE festival, they are reinvited to perform at the next edition of the festival. The chances of an artist not performing after 5 festivals is 0.4%. There are 46656 possible versions of the evening. Performance duo Neurosis Cabaret, die side no. 1, have variables within their performance. They each take an envelope which determines who is contestant and who is host. The host then spins a wheel with around 12 options for tasks on it (I didn’t count). The contestant performs around three of those tasks. Including all of the permutations within this performance, and that there are 46,656 permutations of die rolls, there are is total of roughly 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ways the third evening of DICE festival could go. The chances of every artist getting to perform once each are just 1.5%, which heavily suggests that the dice were rigged on the 17th, because apparently that’s what happened. Though who knows, it’s possible. I really really want to know if they rigged it or not.') (set: $BenTwo to 'There’s something really great about a festival embedded within the Edinburgh Fringe which is literally paying artists to NOT perform.') (set: $BenThree to 'In Neurosis Cabaret’s *Voilawhirl!*, the first wheel spins lands on a LOSER option, which kills the game dead. They restart, re-performing the whole elaborate introduction and warm-up routine they’ve just done. They spin the wheel and it lands on LOSER again. There’s a pause - do they start again, again? Or will the audience have tired of it? They skip the intro and re-spin the wheel. A part of me is glad, because the intro was a little tedious, but another part of me feels bound to the rules of the game, and wants us all to surrender willingly to chance. It’s fascinating to me that artists would choose the break the rules of their own game.') (set: $BenFour to 'Three rolls in. The probability of each of the remaining four acts NOT getting to perform is 58% now. Some of the performers hold hands. We get no. 5, Lillian Nejatpour’s dance piece *Choreophobia*. It’s totally mesmerising. The two dancers look strikingly similar to each other, and move in sync, often perfect mirror images. It’s sweaty and ferociously intimate. I spill my drink and anxiously watch the puddle creep slowly towards the stage, not wanting to get up to fetch tissues just yet for fear of missing the show. It’s also longest of the pieces, lasting about 25 minutes. We all watch attentively. Then no. 2, Craig Manson’s *Gayboys*. To the Grindr notification tone, and dressed in white tennis shorts, Manson and Conor Milliken perform synchronised movements satirising cis gay poster boys. They pose with Starbucks cups and jerk off Red Bull cans, two po-faced identikit corporate cut-outs. It’s totally hilarious, and with all that energy drink on the floor, it’s a good thing they didn’t go before *Choreophobia*, I think. Then it’s time for the last die roll, with Koko Brown (no. 4) and Josh Coates (no. 3) yet to be rolled. A drum roll, and it’s…') (set: $BenFive to '*Choreophobia* again! I’m sad Josh Coates won’t get to do his thing, but I’m delighted to be able to watch *Choreophobia* again. BUT THEN. Nejatpour steps forward and says that they have decided to let one of the other acts perform, as they’ve travelled all this way. A short moment later, and Koko Brown says that Josh should perform seeing as her act is a segment of her show currently on at Pleasance. It’s all quite exciting, but I can’t help but think to myself: well, this surely defeats the point of the game. Josh is a friend, so I’ve been rooting all this time for no. 3 (I blow on the die once) and part of me is glad we get to see him perform, but the other part of me feels bound to the rules of the game, and wants us all to surrender willingly to chance. It’s fascinating that the artists taking part in this festival, the audience, and even the organisers seem to want to rebel against its structure. Fate is a cruel mistress whom everyone seems to regret having invited to the party.') (set: $BenSix to 'Josh Coates performs *Coven*. We stand in a circle around Josh and he explains that he is an awkward person, that he doesn’t quite fit in his own skin, and that today he is performing a reverse exorcism, that we will watch him embrace his awkwardness as he takes his clothes off and stands naked. After several minutes a song will play and Josh will dance, and we will dance too, and anyone else who feels like they want to take their clothes off may do so. It all happens. A little more uncomfortable than he thought, Josh asks the operator if we can skip ahead a minute on the timer. There are smiles, a little laughter - awkward, but friendly. We all notice that the windows look out onto the street, and that there must have been a few bemused passers by. And then Immaterial Girl by SOPHIE plays (banger), and the lights dim and all the awkwardness is sucked out the room - everyone gets to be in their bodies and dance it out. People strip to their underwear, and… wait, yes, that’s Hamish the Statistician, bollock naked, bouncing around like a tennis ball! I’m really grateful that we’ve got to have done this. It feels like different kind of surrender, one made on our own terms. Suddenly I can’t imagine the night ending any other way.')

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