Festival Previews Video Blog

When we think of festivals in Switzerland we immediately think of the famous Montreux Jazz Festival. Yet Switzerland has masses of festivals held in towns and villages all over the country.

Antony and his band 7 Dollar Taxi contacted us during the Brighton Fringe to tell us about the Open-Air Hoch-Ybrig. The Open-air Hoch-Ybrig or Hoch-Ybrig Open-Air Festival starts this Friday (13th June and runs through to Monday 16th June). With over 10,000 festival-goers, this is the biggest festival featuring Swiss bands. The festival is located in the idyllic mountainous Alps about 1,000 metres above sea level. Hoch-Ybrig rocks for three days with the line-up seeing a lot of mainstream pop bands taking the stage.

7 $ Taxi are performing their brilliant song, “Do the Robot” which you can check out below. I have asked them to keep me posted about other festivals they are performing at in Switzerland over the summer months. So watch this space…

Yesterday we popped along to the Press Launch of the 2008 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. This year’s Fringe will have 2,088 shows featuring 31,320 performances in 247 venues from 46 countries!

Jon Morgan, Director of the Fringe took to the floor to summarise the panoply of talent about to be unleashed for our delight. The spread of shows reflects the usual feast of Theatre, Music, Musicals & Opera, Comedy, Exhibitions, Children’s shows and Dance and Physical Theatre. Topical and world issues are high on the theatrical and comedy agenda along with our growing preoccupation with the digital age.

However there are undercurrents to such a large festival. An interesting article in The Herald newspaper and The Times newspaper revealed the inevitable behaviour of large groupings. Such behaviour is not unexpected; whenever things get too large you don’t have enough things in common and you lose that close-knit sense of community that once bound you so tightly together. A splinter group forms and we see it coming from the largest venues first: Assembly, Gilded Balloon, Pleasance and the Underbelly. While it is something the Fringe may wish to prevent, when it happens it is usually beneficial. From an eclectic mix of theatrical genres, specialties will always challenge given sufficient numbers. Condensing specialities invigorates quality! This is normal, this is life!

For centuries women have endured the pains and pleasures of fashion. Just the other day a friend sent me a couple of images which instantly brought to mind the ancient Chinese practice of foot binding.

Dating from the Sung Dynasty 960-1279 AD, this bizarre practice allegedly started because a Prince of the Sung Dynasty had a foot fetish for tiny feet. Women in their millions were crippled into submission, their quality of life destroyed on a sexual whim. It wasn’t until 1915 that Dr Sun Yat-Sen, China’s modern founder known to millions as “The Father of the Chinese Revolution” declared the practice illegal. Even then it took years before such embedded doctrines worked their way out of the generational system.

By the looks of these shoes it’s reverse “Lotus Gait”, a term used to describe women with deformed feet who avoided placing weight on the front and tended to walk on their heels.

The cruel reality of a perverse fashion!

Now in its seventh year, The Prague Fringe kicked off on Sunday at the start of 8 glorious days of music, comedy, dance theatre and film.

Four talented performers and groups signed up to create their own unique Virtual Flyers:

With her show, Viva! the fabulous Maria Tecce serenades you with music inspired by the sensuality and passion of Argentinian tango, Spanish songs and the poetry of Pablo Neruda

The finger picking magic of Guitarist and Composer, Peter Griggs takes you on a journey of cool Brazilian sounds with his show A Day in Prague, A Night in Brazil.

Multi Stori Theatre perform their 5 Star hit show about the myth of Cassandra - the Trojan Princess who foresaw the future but was fated not to be believed. You can catch their two-person show at the Divadlo Inspirace in Prague.

Returning from Canada before going off to the Berlin-Lacht Festival in Germany, Black Hand Theatre bring their show Silkworm to the Prague Fringe. It is an intriguing tale of colliding worlds and what happens when rampant industrial expansion meets rural mysticism. You can catch their show at the Studio Rubin in Prague.

England’s largest and oldest annual Fringe Festival sadly concluded yesterday. The Brighton Fringe is just a WONDERFUL festival. It allows you to see such a spread of artistic endeavour without the mania of Edinburgh.

Sadly we lose the wonderful Holly Payton as she steps down as Operations Manager after six glorious years at the Brighton Festival Fringe. Holly is moving to take on a wider role in the ever growing fringe industry aiming to be the lead feed to improve collaboration between festivals and supporting organisations which is sadly disparate at the moment. I hope to catch an interview with Holly in the near future so we can all learn more about her activities as she is THE lady to watch in the future.

As for ourselves, we managed to spend some time in Brighton filming and meeting customers as well as enjoying the wonderful mix of regency heritage and bohemian ambiance that is Brighton. It’s been a whirlwind of activity promoting Virtual Flyers and interviewing so many talented performers out there. For me, the best part has been promoting and reading customer’s 10 Questions. Each one exposing a network of knowledge and growing talent that is just a fascinating to read.

Sadly we say farewell to the Brighton Festival Fringe for another year. Roll on May next year, we can’t wait….