Dancer Bettina Szabo + kinetic sculpture in Petrikor Danse’s Habitat at Edinburgh Fringe
Dancer Bettina Szabo and a light-infused kinetic sculpture mesmerise in Habitat, a dance work inspired by ideas of home, identity…and the life cycle of hermit crabs.
Bettina Szabo and her company Petrikor Danse make their Edinburgh Festival Fringe debut with the UK premiere of Habitat Tuesday 15th to Sunday 27th August. This multi-disciplinary show is inspired by the life cycle of hermit crabs, the many forms taken by Greek god of travel Hermes, and memories of Szabo’s own journey of migration from Uruguay to Canada.
Dance, sculpture, sound design and lighting combine in a mesmerising performance where all the elements of Habitat are controlled in real time by Szabo.
Szabo has choreographed a solo for herself using the limits of her own hyper-mobility and scoliosis. She shares the stage with Jacinthe Derasp’s kinetic sculpture of Hermes – made from 600 abaca fibre paper cones. Szabo enters the pulsating sculpture which radiates with Paul Chambers’s lighting. Like the hermit crab that finds shelter in abandoned shells as it grows, she disappears into an intimate semi-opaque space, communing with the sculpture. She slips through it, curls up in it, plays with it and explores its mobility before eventually emerging transformed.
Szabo wears the flexible-yet-resistant sculpture as an extension of her body during the performance. Her own costume, designed by Anomal Couture and Alexandra Bachmayer, incorporates a network of LED lights that activate when Szabo is rolled up in the sculpture.
An almost aquatic soundtrack by composers Ana Dall’Ara Majek and Joel Lavoie incorporates sounds of the sculpture in motion and Szabo’s own voice treated in real time by live electronics.
Tickets from £12.50 are on sale now at https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/habitat
View the trailer for Habitat here.