This is Rambert Festival Theatre Edinburgh 2nd July 2026 Review
This is Rambert is at the Festival Theatre Edinburgh from Thursday 02 to Saturday 04 July, and this tour and the three works performed tonight are very special ones, as Rambert is celebrating the milestone event of the company being 100 years old.
Founded in 1926 by Marie Rambert, this company that still bears her name has a long history of supporting, and presenting innovative and often ground-breaking work from a rich and diverse pool of creative talents, and as this programme states, "We're 100 and we're just getting started".
The three performance works on tonight were, as always, unique in their own way, but all bearing that very distinctive Rambert dance ethos. In performance order this evening were the following works –
"In Crimson" The first of a new commissioning programme launching Rambert's centenary year, this work which first premiered on 10th June 2026 at Sadler's Wells, London is a re-imagining of the 2022 work, "Fugue In Crimson". With choreography by Bobbi Jene Smith & Or Schraiber, this work, with original music by Yonatan Daskal, plus some well known classical works (including Sinfonia by Johan Sebastian Bach), and "La Solitude" by French singer/songwriter Barbara, is an exploration of those in-between spaces that we rarely get to glimpse a sight of.
Here, over a performance time of some 27 minutes, what happens front of stage and behind that stage curtain is an exploration into emotions that are charged with intimacy and tension. The end result is a work full of beauty and grace with some emotional and powerful solo, duo, and group performances.
"Hop(e)storm" is a title with a play on words as it is both a call to freedom and collective joy as well as a work that channels the rhythms and energy of the Lindy Hop, viewed not from a historical perspective, but one of a post-internet rave lens. This non stop expression of the sheer energy and physicality, which premiered in May 2025 at the Southbank Centre, captures the joy that dance can offer to everyone.
In this work, with artistic concept and direction by Marine Brutti, Jonathan Debrouwer and Arthur Harel with choreography by (LA) HORDE in collaboration with the Rambert dancers and rehearsal directors, that exuberant essence of the Lindy Hop is successfully reimagined for a new age.
The final performance work this evening, "Gallery of Consequence" premiered in 2025 on this very stage at the Festival Theatre, and it is good to see this one again as it is so rich in detail that one viewing of it was never going to be enough.
Set in an airport, every gate here has its story to tell and every person at that gate, travellers and staff, have their own individual stories to tell too. In this work, choreographer and director Emma Evelein has taken the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and given them their own individual stories, their own identities, and somehow managed to fit all of these pieces into a completed picture which also has its own far larger narrative to tell. If there is one downside to this work, it is simply that there is so much going on here, so many stories being told that this is a work that you could watch many times and still be finding something new in it to discover.
Over the years that I have been reviewing Rambert, there have been so many different works on stage and, like anything else in life, personal taste plays a big part in how you respond to them as an individual. Whatever response their work evokes, that creative journey with Rambert is always one worth taking.
Sadly, there were no cast/performer information sheets available for tonight's performance, so my apologies to dancers whom I am unable to credit individually for their often striking individual performances.
Review by Tom King (c) 2026.
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com
Founded in 1926 by Marie Rambert, this company that still bears her name has a long history of supporting, and presenting innovative and often ground-breaking work from a rich and diverse pool of creative talents, and as this programme states, "We're 100 and we're just getting started".
The three performance works on tonight were, as always, unique in their own way, but all bearing that very distinctive Rambert dance ethos. In performance order this evening were the following works –
"In Crimson" The first of a new commissioning programme launching Rambert's centenary year, this work which first premiered on 10th June 2026 at Sadler's Wells, London is a re-imagining of the 2022 work, "Fugue In Crimson". With choreography by Bobbi Jene Smith & Or Schraiber, this work, with original music by Yonatan Daskal, plus some well known classical works (including Sinfonia by Johan Sebastian Bach), and "La Solitude" by French singer/songwriter Barbara, is an exploration of those in-between spaces that we rarely get to glimpse a sight of.
Here, over a performance time of some 27 minutes, what happens front of stage and behind that stage curtain is an exploration into emotions that are charged with intimacy and tension. The end result is a work full of beauty and grace with some emotional and powerful solo, duo, and group performances.
"Hop(e)storm" is a title with a play on words as it is both a call to freedom and collective joy as well as a work that channels the rhythms and energy of the Lindy Hop, viewed not from a historical perspective, but one of a post-internet rave lens. This non stop expression of the sheer energy and physicality, which premiered in May 2025 at the Southbank Centre, captures the joy that dance can offer to everyone.
In this work, with artistic concept and direction by Marine Brutti, Jonathan Debrouwer and Arthur Harel with choreography by (LA) HORDE in collaboration with the Rambert dancers and rehearsal directors, that exuberant essence of the Lindy Hop is successfully reimagined for a new age.
The final performance work this evening, "Gallery of Consequence" premiered in 2025 on this very stage at the Festival Theatre, and it is good to see this one again as it is so rich in detail that one viewing of it was never going to be enough.
Set in an airport, every gate here has its story to tell and every person at that gate, travellers and staff, have their own individual stories to tell too. In this work, choreographer and director Emma Evelein has taken the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and given them their own individual stories, their own identities, and somehow managed to fit all of these pieces into a completed picture which also has its own far larger narrative to tell. If there is one downside to this work, it is simply that there is so much going on here, so many stories being told that this is a work that you could watch many times and still be finding something new in it to discover.
Over the years that I have been reviewing Rambert, there have been so many different works on stage and, like anything else in life, personal taste plays a big part in how you respond to them as an individual. Whatever response their work evokes, that creative journey with Rambert is always one worth taking.
Sadly, there were no cast/performer information sheets available for tonight's performance, so my apologies to dancers whom I am unable to credit individually for their often striking individual performances.
Review by Tom King (c) 2026.
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com