Star rating ****
The Zawose Family, St George's West Star rating ****
Capoeira Knights, St George's West Star rating ****
Driven, Bedlam Theatre Star rating ****
Taken at face value, Children of Cambodia is one of those Fringe shows that gives an enjoyable glimpse of another culture: here it's the traditional dance - classical and folk - of the country, presented by teenagers who smile with unaffected warmth and perform with delicate grace in the formal, ornately-costumed court and temple entertainments and with irrepressible energy in the routines celebrating rural life. It would be well worth an hour or so of your time, even without the heart-rending backstory - that these dances were almost lost to posterity under the Khmer Rouge, and that the young performers come from impoverished, war-ravaged backgrounds, as a short film about one of them illustrates movingly. Ends Sunday.
A film documentary shown before The Zawose Family from Tanzania begin their set lays out the group's history. Patriarch Hukwe Zawose was an internationally acclaimed musician before his death in 2003 left his family (of seven wives and 40 children) in a limbo of grief - and vanishing opportunities for those who had toured the globe with him. At the first shimmering of his hand-crafted thumb pianos, it's clear these seven members of Hukwe's family have inherited his passion and his talent for music-making. They sing, play and dance with unstinting joy, as if honouring his legacy with every ethereal harmony, percussive drumbeat and swaggering dance step - and the costumes are as richly detailed as the ones Hukwe wore himself. Let's hope they revive the family tradition of being Fringe regulars. Ends August 26.
Capoeira Knights has a subtitle, "Favelas of Hope", and a narrator, Bruno, who - in common with the Zawoses and the Cambodians - makes no special pleading on behalf of the performers but simply lays out the facts of their lives: slum-land poverty, no prospects and then a chance escape through performing their heartland culture to audiences elsewhere. And what performances these young Brazilians deliver. Not just the fighting walk - and whirling, scything kicks - of capoeira, but a whole roster of athletic dance moves that acknowledge ongoing African influences which have defiant roots in the slave trade. Samba, football, carnival - the six astounding male dancers and the live musicians driving them on with infectious rhythms celebrate them all in style, with tremendous young singer Paloma able to bring the house down in her own right. Ends August 26.
Blame it not on the bossa nova, but on my handwriting: I misread my notes and thought that Neel de Jong had left town when actually she'd shifted venue mid-stint to 10am at Bedlam. Sometimes it feels as if de Jong arrived in this world with not enough skin covering her nerve ends. She reacts, like a living litmus, to her surroundings - to whatever events or people she encounters at any given time - and Driven epitomises that random spontaneity. Her opening lullaby-lament - accompanied by pianist Augusto Pirodda - traces the effect urban decay has on her moods: not just buildings, but humankind and passers-by appear grey, ugly, hostile, derelict. It depresses her, then angers her. And then she dances. Always she looks like an overgrown urchin - and indeed always she retains a child-like capacity for wonderment. Her body language eases. Her smile returns, beatific. She thanks us. Our being there has restored her optimism. Her constant battle to overcome disenchantment and her willingness to risk audience rejection by being open and vulnerable is like a blessing to the day. Ends tomorrow.
