The Dunedin Fringe Festival is always a fantastic event, bringing out the interesting, the weird and the bizarre. This year’s Fringe has been equally fantastic, but I have wondered all week where the fringe is. Don’t get me wrong – I have loved every performance I have been lucky enough to attend. Every one has evoked emotion, inspired reflection, and made me look more deeply at everyday life around me. But they haven’t felt very ‘finge-y.’

But that all changes, as my daughter and I head up the stairs of an innocuous-looking Princes Street building to a site called the Laurel Project. We arrive a little late, but the Fringe website indicates this doesn’t matter; “Free,” it says, “Casual admission.”

We arrive on a landing where three others are already standing, watching through a gridded window to see the performance within. There are more seats inside, but they are all taken, so we stand with our new crew, skulking on a shadowy landing. It feels voyeuristic.

Inside, we see three figures dressed in white, paper coveralls; these are the dancers, David Huggins, Josie Archer and Kosta Bogoievski. They are clearly naked underneath. A note taped to the door warns that the performance includes nudity. My daughter is almost 16, but I check; she isn’t concerned. 

It takes me a few minutes to figure out the patterns and to realise they are being orchestrated by a piece of paper and a hidden voice. “Reset,” he says, and the paper is consulted, a new combination is explored against a background of words, sounds, music. Performance art and improvisational dance are tangled together behind the grid-like lines of the window through which we peer. The dancers are unhindered, free to respond. They are stimulated by words written on a piece of paper, taped to the wall. These people, these objects, these words, these sounds – go.

Paper on the wall is consulted, paper coveralls are discarded. Naked bodies spoon on the floor and stalk through the space, fox-headed. Here, finally, is the fringe of the Fringe.  

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