In harness for Manipulate 2015

For Paterson and her company, All or Nothing (which she founded in 2006), this Manipulate showing at the start of the company's forthcoming tour underlines how far aerial work has come in Scotland, not just in terms of technique and content but even more rewardingly, in how today's performers are challenging audience expectations. Again she fills in background info. "People tend to think - "oh, it's trapeze". Or maybe silks. And they have this idea that it's circus, and acrobatic tricks. Not really theatre, or dance even. But what we're doing with Three's A Crowd is both of those, and more. We're looking at the cause and effect of human relationships, and how we can express - through using aerial work as another dimension - what can happen when a third person influences how people think or feel or behave. It's all about manipulating people, really. Like making human beings into living puppets, and using that imagery to explore what happens when a group of friends meet up again for the first time in ten years. It's a situation I think everyone can identify with, but there are definitely moments where aerial movement can offer a visual language that goes beyond words, I think."

There is some spoken dialogue, however - words courtesy of Zoe Venditozzi, a writer who just happens to have been at university with Paterson. More evidence of friends at work surfaces when she talks of who else is involved: Tony Mills, for instance. "We'd worked together on a dance piece for children," says Paterson. "This is his introduction to aerial work - his DJ name is Tony Thrills, so I hope this whole experience is living up to that!" With six performers in all, a soundscore composed by Luke Sutherland and a set designed by Becky Minto, Three's A Crowd is Paterson's most ambitious company production to date. She's honed her own considerable skills across a tremendous range of high-profile projects, however - White Gold at the Sugar Sheds in Greenock, Cryptic's Sound to Sea on the Clyde, The Tin Forest (with the National Theatre of Scotland) all kept her busy in 2014. Now, it's time to let her own ideas get properly off the ground with Three's A Crowd. "What's really exciting," she adds, "is that we're going to venues where they have the height to really show off the aerial work. In some cases, as well, the audience will be able to see what's happening with the ropes and pulleys off-stage - I know three's meant to be a magic number, but people don't just fly unaided across the stage... I think there's so much skill and team effort involved, that it's nice if people get a glimpse of that."

Simon Hart echoes that enthusiasm when he talks about other aspects of what is now the eighth Manipulate festival of visual theatre. As the festival's artistic director, Hart finds himself juggling all manner of programming possibilities and, inevitably, having to make difficult choices. "It was always my hope, and my aim, to encourage Scottish artists to create all kinds of visual theatre - take risks, try out ideas, find their own directions, and to have a platform to show their work," he says. "And now, more and more people are responding - audiences, as well as artists, are much more of an interested community now. But at the same time as being a showcase for Scottish work, I still think it's important to bring in the international pieces. Give everyone a chance to see what is often a very different aesthetic at work. I think it's especially interesting that this year, we've got three world-acclaimed companies who've been around for the last 25 to 30 years, and who are still making really exciting work. The skills are all well-established, so now it's all about creativity and imagination - which I think is inspirational for anyone who's just starting out."

Theatre Akhe, from Russia, is a case in point. Hart cites their production Mr Carmen as a triumph of invention and painstaking craft over what seem limited (and limiting) resources. "You're looking at bits of string, playing cards - everyday objects, in fact, coming together in a show full of exquisite moments... and mad anarchy! Well, it is Ahke, after all - iconoclasm is never very far away." As he points out, the group came into being in the late 1980's, part of the radical, subversive underground art movements that sprang up in Moscow and St Petersburg. "There's a very specific aesthetic in what they do that we see less and less of now," says Hart. "A very sharp, astute understanding of how to use objects and map out what the physical - and also the poetic - possibilities of those objects are in real time. It's rooted in years of hands-on experience, and it's not something you can really replicate with technology or software. For anyone who isn't really techno-savvy, I think Ahke will be inspiring."

The body, too, is another instrument that Hart is happy to bring to the fore in his programme. "We've got Sabine Molenaar's first ever solo piece, That's It, and it is simply amazing. I saw it last June, wasn't really looking for additions to the programme - but long before the end, I knew I had to book it. There is such intense, surprising physicality in what she does. You know those cartoons, or puppet shows, where a character's head spins round in a full 360° - well if any woman could do that, it would be Sabine! It's a marvellously weird piece."

Alongside the delights of the visual theatre programme, there is also the animation strand with, again. an impressive showing by Scottish talents, that BAFTA award-winning duo of Will Anderson and Ainslie Henderson among them. See for yourself: it all kicks off at Edinburgh's Traverse on Sat Jan 31 through to Feb 7.

Full details of dates, times and events in other venues are at www.manipulatefestival.org