from the fringe.....

Rising Appalachia is at the Fringe Festival, Edinburgh... Scotland performing a collaborative piece with Dance Box Theater from DC.  12 shows in a row, right smack dap downtown in the middle of the chaos, middle of the maddness, center of the mayhem.  So far, our work has had 4 star reviews.. which is a blessings to say the least in this sea-storm of an event where its a bit of tooth pulling to get ANY reviewer out to even see a show.  Much less write about it.   Someone today mentioned that there are 13,000 shows PER DAY here in this city for the month of August... which seems a feat highly impossible until you actually come here and see the masses of theater goers and street artists.  There really is too much to even comprehend.... inspiration overload.  In a nice way.....

As usual, we have our favorites.  This is a " bring your own show" sort of a festival, so of course, people do exactly that.  Today we met a performer who is LITERALLY walking the accumulated distance of 5 miles up and down one ladder in 8 hour stints in a silver astronaut costume.  Every time he reaches the top of the ladder, he marks a white star on the ceiling ( full of thousands of stars thus far ) in chalk and then proceeds to tell everyone that he is striving to reach astronaut status with NASA.  He has written them and rallied thousands of postcards marked " what do you want to be when you grow up " for this absolutely hilariously charming and rather meditative goal.  Art is seeping out of the walls here...

Mostly, we are taken aback by a circus here called TABU ( No fit State Circus) and are sectioning off atleast 3 evenings to see their work.  It is an epicenter of creativity under their big top with such a dynamic and sweet group of performers stretching to the outerlimits everyones idea of what performance can look like.  We are trading albums for trapeeze lessons and handstand tips.   What can we say.  The Rising Appalachia circus just might run away with the circus ;)

thankful to be here.  thankful to spread our sounds to yet another distant shore.....