Tandava is billed as a fusion between Scottish guitar and classical Indian dance. But watching this tightly choreographed and virtuosically performed show from West Lothian’s Simon Thacker and Bangalore’s Piah Dance feels like a journey through many more music and dance styles whose influences began in India. 

Tandava is a form of spiritual dance, and the quartet of pieces takes us through Hindu mythology, up Himalayan mountains, and through churning oceans, from Shiva to Ganga, channelling its tales via a trio of dancers led in precise formations by Priya Varunesh Kumar. This show is performed in one of the tiny classic box theatres that are quintessential Fringe 1.0, and it feels like it embodies the Festival’s original spirit: experimental but high quality, and close-up in a way that rarely happens with dance productions.   

Both music and movement fuse beautifully, but more than that, the incongruity of this fusion makes space for other dances and music styles to echo within it. We catch glimpses of flamenco in the skirt swishes and staccato strums; a reminder that the Spanish Roma community came originally from India via Persia and North Africa. There are hip circles and drops that chime with Middle Eastern belly dance too: witnessed close up that kinship feels even more apparent. Tandava is wondrous in its own right, but also raises the thought that what are now classic, distinct styles only ever had the chance to evolve because people from different traditions got together (just like Thacker and Piah Dance) to create something original and brilliant. 

Tandava, theSpace @ Niddry St, until 26 August, 8.25pm.