Fringe Festival, Dance Base 2025: Dab + Cielo Raso

Edinburgh Fringe Festival is one of the largest and most important cultural events in the world. It is held annually in Edinburgh, Scotland, throughout the month of August, alongside the Edinburgh International Festival. In virtue of the collaboration of Etxepare Basque Institute with Scottish scene Dance Base, Basque artists can perform at the Fringe Festival. It is therefore a very important platform for artists, both for visibility and for the opportunity to network with international cultural agents.

The Etxepare Basque Institute, in collaboration with ADDE, the Basque association of dance professionals, extended a call to Basque professional dance companies to participate in the 2025 Fringe Festival. The Dance Base selection committee chose two Basque companies to perform at Fringe Festival: DAB and Cielo Raso.

Within this year’s Basque Showcase, DAB will present ‘Noeud’ in six performances from August 19 to 24, and Cielo Raso will perform ‘Née’ with yet other six performances those same days. Furthermore, Cielo Raso’ choreographer Igor Calonge will teach contemporary dance courses each morning.

‘Noeud’

NOEUD is the proposal by dance company DAB, in which we delve into the working methodologies shared by Eduardo Chillida and Cristóbal Balenciaga. The creation of spaces and curvilinear figures are the concepts of both artists that guide the movement of their time towards freedom. The period in which they lived has also served as inspiration for us: we have observed the political, social and cultural situation of their time and positioned three dancers on stage with the intention of finding the path from constraint to freedom.

‘Née’

Née is a work that moves us, gives roots to the human, caresses loneliness, stratifies loss, accompanies disillusionment, emancipates disenchantment, energises absence, fights for love, virtualises the nearby, sustains magic, frightens off demons, humanises the inanimate, returns from the dark, attacks the imagination, separates fears and puts them in order, crosses the air and strives. With elegance, it builds a journey far removed from noise. It is told in the first person, thoughtful and transformative.