Cambell Park, Milton Keynes
July 19, 2025
This year’s IF, Milton Keynes International Festival, featured many dance, circus and movement performances, mostly schedules outdoors. But for a long time on the first Saturday, it looked like the weather wasn’t going to play ball. The morning was very rainy. It finally stopped late lunchtime though and, with some judicious rescheduling, everything was soon underway.
A walk across Campbell Park took the audience for Human Time – Tree Time by Club Girko to The Copse, then to a delightfully quiet clearing for the 30-minute performance. An exploration of balance created by Josef Stiller and Julian Vogel, the work emphasises co-operation, working together and interdependency.
Photo David Mead
From balancing on a huge branch, itself balanced on a tree stump, the two performers move to balancing a cut branch on a shoulder, then the back of a hand. Things soon get more complicated. Branches are carefully and delicately balanced on branches. And then on more branches. It’s very slow and very deliberate and it needs to be. The peaceful surroundings helped, but it really was rather calming. If you want a deeper meaning, the piece can be read as a comment that humans and nature can work in balance, in harmony. Or you can just enjoy it for what it is.
Back in the festival’s central area, Pagrav Dance Company’s new One Sky was inspired by India’s vibrant kite festivals, held on January 14 or 15 each year across the west of the country, including the states of Gujrat, Rajasthan, and Maharastra, and that mark the transition of the sun and of winter into spring.
Photo Carys Underwood
Like the kite festivals, choreographer Urja Desai Thakore’s dance is a celebration, the dance joyful, vibrant and emphasising the spirit of togetherness. Specially created for outdoor performance, it sees traditional kathak elements given a modern feel. There’s a lot of interaction, a lot of exchanged smiles, as the ensemble perform on set designer Simon Daw’s multi-level raised stage, devised to represent the rooftop platforms from which the kites are traditionally flown.
With the performers brilliant orange and yellow costumes (by Sandhya Raman) and kites fixed to the rails at the back of the stage, the scene is certainly colourful and brimming with energy. All it needs to complete the picture is some way to be found of actually flying real kites during the show.
Festival-goers of all ages were also invited to design their own kites in hands-on workshops before and after the performance. And some very impressive efforts there were too.
With the clouds finally breaking up, and the humidity and temperature rising fast, it was then over to Cardiff-based contemporary circus company NoFit State and their latest outdoor production, Bamboo.
The bundles of huge bamboo poles brought to the stage by the performers are soon transformed into structures six metres high. Immediately striking is just how light and how strong the bamboo is, although anyone who has been to the Far East and seen it used as scaffolding, and at height, will not have been surprised. It rather made me wonder why I’ve not seen anyone else use it this way. Bamboo is certainly one-of-a-kind.
Photo Carys Underwood
The 45-minute show is very playful. There’s plenty of light and comedic interaction between the performers, and performers and audience. Just like the bamboo they work with, and although a lot of it is tightly choreographed, one senses there’s a certain amount of bend and flex in what happens.
The publicity notes how bamboo is a sustainable material for the future and how the show is a playful celebration of what is possible when humans and the natural world work in harmony. But while all that’s undoubtedly true, Bamboo is most definitely a show you can just stand back and enjoy; especially on an afternoon when the sun finally shone.
For dates and venues of future performances of One Sky by Pagrav Dance Company, click here.
For dates and venues of future Bamboo shows by No Fit State Circus, click here.