Czech choreographer Lenka Vagnerová has an eye for an image that tickles the dark heart of the subconscious. Her 2014 piece La Loba dwelt in the bone-scattered landscape of witchy folklore. Now she has turned her dreamlike gaze on 19th-century travelling panoptikums (unkindly known as ‘freak shows’). Panoptikum brings together a rag-tag group of beautiful, disparate outcasts, all with their own physical anomalies and stories to tell. But while they may start out as ripe targets for an unscrupulous chalk-faced ringmaster who wants to display them for profit, in the end a vengeful twist answers the question of who is truly freakish.

The piece is fragmented into vignettes which, like mirror shards, never quite give us the full picture, only an enigmatic glimpse. A crinoline-skirted set of conjoined twins separate briefly to dance languidly with suitors; when they reconnect, one slices the other away. A man with swollen limbs tries to grasp the ghost of a woman who appears as floating dresses. Spectators caw in mechanical cackles and a severed head sings baroque arias. It all feels somewhat discombobulated, like the overarching drama is just out of reach. Nevertheless, Panoptikum is a bleak feast for the senses. 

Panoptikum, Zoo Southside, until Sunday 10 August, 3.10pm; main picture: Vojtech Brtnicky.