The Wall Explores Isolation at Summerhall
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- Seed Dance Company presented The Wall at Summerhall after appearing at the Edinburgh fringe in 2024 with Lost Connection, a show about smartphone addiction.
- The Wall’s two box-like apparatus were repeatedly modified into apartments and other confines; their reconfiguration sometimes distracted from the dance, but they also provided micro-stages and suggested imprisonment.
- Wen-Jen Huang, the work’s choreographer and artistic director, performed with the dancers as silvery hair highlights, muted clothing and electronic accompaniment created an anonymous urban mood.
- The dancers performed in isolation despite close physical proximity, including a solo beneath another dancer on the roof and another in the adjoining room, before forming facing walls with their bodies.
- Hsing-Yu Chen closes the 45-minute work with a forlorn, otherworldly solo inside two clingfilm-wrapped frames, pressing against the resulting tunnel as barriers appear both thin and difficult to break through.
Why it matters: For Summerhall audiences through 31 August, the 45-minute work’s boxlike set offers both intimate micro-stages and a recurring image of imprisonment, making enforced closeness a physical measure of urban isolation rather than mere scenery. The clingfilm-tunnel ending gives that theme an emotional charge without sacrificing the production’s restraint.
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