Taiwan Season: The Wall review – close encounters in a city that never sleeps

Summerhall, Edinburgh Seed Dance Company deliver a show that builds in intensity as it riffs on imprisonment and estrangement Taiwan’s Seed Dance Company visited the fringe in 2024 with a rather literal yet haunting show about smartphone addiction, Lost Connection .

This similarly coolly executed piece could share the same title as its predecessor but is more enigmatic.

It makes use of two box-like, occasionally illuminated apparatus which are modified during the show to resemble apartments and various confines.

The cast are repeatedly isolated from each other despite their close proximity on the thrust stage – one questing solo is delivered beneath another dancer on the roof, while one is in the room next door.

There is a busy urban and sometimes uncanny anonymity to these restless vignettes, accentuated by an electronic accompaniment, with the dancers – including choreographer and artistic director Wen-Jen Huang – sharing silvery highlights in their hair and wearing similar shirts and trousers in subdued shades.

In unison, they can bring the automated air of the commute, making a counterpoint to one aching duet choreographed with a behind-closed-doors tenderness.

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