If you’re looking for a moment of intricate solitude this week, make sure to stop by Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket, sit in the looming darkness, let yourself fall into a soft bean bag, and watch the evocative performance of Portuguese disabled dancer Diana Niepce in the film Orbits. Underlined with a soft classical-music score created by musician and composer Scott Twynholm that lets you drift off, you can follow the slow movements of Niepce as she lies on the floor, holds her legs, lets them go. Having no text or spoken word, the film is a departure from the usual theatre work created by Birds Of Paradise, Scotland’s leading touring company employing disabled and non-disabled actors. 

The information leaflet that is given at the entrance proclaims the film is about ‘a meditation on life, love and loss and the journeys we all take’. So far, so vague. Perhaps it’s too difficult to define the impact of watching Niepce arranging her body in different poses and spaces, seeing her facial expressions, with her lips shaking heavily at one point, at another completely still. The 40-minute film is shown in a loop, with audiences coming and going, some staying the whole duration, others merely catching a glimpse. 

We ponder on the word orbits and think of gravity, how the dancer must overcome it, how we all do, yet how it keeps us in place, together. Orbits is a mediation but exactly on what, it remains unsure. Yet it will still orbit you, forever slightly out of reach. 

Orbits runs at Fruitmarket, Edinburgh, until Friday 5 May.