A chair, a man, a white envelope: The Letter starts with the arrival of the eponymous letter, which becomes an object of play in the show’s wordless opening sequence. Jonzi D shows off his quite considerable skills as a mime and physical performer, opening the letter, and reacting with shock to its contents. He stares, he writhes, he dances with a mix of excitement and horror. He tries to throw the letter away but it follows him round the room. In despair he tries to eat it, but chokes on the paper. Or perhaps on the paper’s content.

What could it be that causes such agitation? It’s a letter from Buckingham Palace: Jonzi D, renowned hip-hop artist, theatre-maker, and creator of the legendary Breakin Convention hip-hop theatre festival at Sadler’s Wells is to be honoured in the Queen’s New Year Honours list with an MBE. To accept or to refuse? To be or to MBE? What would you do? To work it all out, Jonzi D goes back to his roots – Bow, East London – to hear what his friends and family have to say.

On one side is the argument that this is a rare honour for a black British artist; that he has a duty to accept to show that hip-hop is an artform deserving of such honours; that he needs to get down off his high horse, drop the attitude and just say ‘yes’. This is the view put forward by many of the women in his life. In a series of brilliant physical comedy character vignettes, Jonzi transforms himself into the sassy lady friend who rolls cigars on her thigh and shimmies tantalisingly round the stage, berating him for even thinking about turning it down. ‘Stop fighting the white man’ she says ‘stop playing the maverick – there’s a black family in the White House!’. Even more beguilingly is his transformation into his mate Darren’s mum, replete with shopping bags, wide-eyed stares, and fabulous old-school Jamaican accent. She has no time for Jonzi’s nonsense about turning it down, and plays her ace card: ‘Think of your dear Mum, she would have been so pride!’

The argument against comes from numerous male friends and acquaintances. And there’s a lot of them, with a lot to say. Musicians, dealers, guys in the car valeting joint – whoever, wherever – give their views, which vary from the mildly sneering to downright aggressive. ‘MBE?” says one. ‘More like VBE – Victim of the British Empire!’ citing the terrible legacy of slavery, colonisation, and abuse.

Finally, we’re at the family house for Christmas. Since the death of Jonzi’s mum, the matriarch of the family is his big sister Ruth – and he’s in awe of her, and terrified of what she’ll say. The climax of the show is the revelation of Jonzi’s decision, and the reaction of Ruth – which I won’t give away, but will just say that this final scene is played out with the same delightful humour, clever characterisation, and adept rhyming that has brought us through the story to this moment.

A surprising and charming show performed with great aplomb – surprising because who knew such consummate traditional mime skills lurked beneath the hip-hop surface; charming because Jonzi D just is – a charmer who woos his audience and has them there with him on his journey. Hip-hop might not exactly feature, but it’s there under the surface. Jonzi D’s skills as a physical performer are always paramount, merging mellifluously with the verbal storytelling. The autobiographical subject matter at first seems quite small and specific, but is widened out to become a far broader, and important, reflection on dilemmas facing many people from so-called ‘minority’ groups: to what extent are you selling out your cultural heritage when invited in to the establishment?

Three women sitting on a dimly-lit stage, each in her own space, hands busy folding and arranging. The music intensifies, and they rise, and dance. One is presented with a garland, and she twirls ecstatically, the picture of happiness on her wedding day, the two others reflecting her joy and supporting her. The pattern is established: heroine and chorus. Renowned Kathak dancer and choreographer Amina Khayyam plays Federico Garcia Lorca’s angst-ridden and desperate Yerma, whose barrenness becomes an obsession. Dancers Lucy Teed and Jane Chan (former students of Amina Khayyan and of her mentor Alpana Segouta) play everyone else: her husband, friends, sisters, village gossips.

Because the low lighting is mostly focused on Yerma in the first scenes, it takes me a few minutes to realise, with a shock, that the beautiful music I’m hearing isn’t recorded – there at the back of the stage, sitting in the gloom, are a tabla player (Debasish Mukherjee), a classical Indian singer (Lucy Rahman), and a cello player (Alastair Morgan). Keith Khan’s costume design is simple but effective – the three women are in shot-silk midnight blue dresses that shimmer subtly in the semi-darkness, their triangular-shaped skirts spreading out into the space as they spin.

So that’s our team – a host of talent. Garcia Lorca’s play is reduced alchemically to its essence. Kathak is at heart a storytelling form, so lends itself very well to the text: the poetic words of the original stageplay transpose to poetic movement. Amina Khayyam’s interpretation is engaging, her feet thundering on the ground in anger, her arms stretching out in despair, her body whirling and twirling around the stage – first in joy, then agitation and anguish, and finally in madness.

Amina Khayyam’s experience in the form shines through, and she is very much the focus, but the two supporting dancers are able in their roles, which are sometimes traditional Kathak and sometimes more inclined towards contemporary dance and physical theatre. Not that Khayyam would differentiate in any case: programme notes are firm in their assertion that Kathak is a living dance form and thus differentiation of ‘classical’ and ‘contemporary’ modes of expression. The final scenes of hair-shaking wildness, despair and insanity are an intense and accomplished demonstration of the power of movement-based theatre to tell stories.

In Kathak, as in flamenco – which in part grew from Katthak traditions brought to southern Spain by gypsy travellers – the relationship between dancers and musicians is paramount, and it is fantastic to see and hear the inter-relationships between voice, tabla, and stamping feet played out. The cello adds another element – sometimes sounding like a wailing human voice, and at other times providing the foundation for an atmospheric soundscape. Ankle bells add another element. The putting on and taking off of the bells – held on with long ribbons, rather like a boxer’s wraps, wound around the ankles – becomes an intrinsic part of the physical action. Towards the end, the pile of six bell-wraps are piled into the centre like a sacrificial offering, bodies robbed of their bells rolling around them, through the space.

The play might have originally been set in Southern Spain, but the core theme of the oppression of women, housebound and valued only for their ability to mother children, other older women employed by men to manage their oppression, is sadly very much back on the agenda in the 21st century, with the rise of religious fundamentalism. The company’s stated aim to tell ‘new and urgent stories of global importance’ is thus satisfied.

It is interesting also to reflect on the continuing artistic inter-relationship between India and Spain that this production fosters, bringing together Kathak dance with the work of one of Spain’s most renowned poet-playwrights.

An accomplished piece of dance-theatre, and an interesting reflection on the continuing struggle for women’s liberation.

What’s the difference between paradise and utopia? Some say that paradise is eternal – it always was, is, and will be – whereas a utopia is created, built knowing what has gone before, with the intention of making something better. So perhaps this show should be called The Utopia Project, as what it is about is starting from scratch, building a fresh new world.

Here’s our raw material: one woman (Stacey Sampsom) and one man (Jerry Killick, acclaimed Forced Entertainment performer). A white floor with checked black markings in the middle of this wide space. Galloons of water stacked stage right (in plastic bottles, which is not a very good start to a new world, but still). Some filing cabinets to each side. Wood, trestle legs, power tools.

The action is in two distinct performance modes. On the white floor, our new wave Adam and Eve spar, debating all sorts of philosophical, moral, and ethical conundrums. Is killing wrong? Lying? Stealing the other person’s water? This happens whilst they build their world, in real time, before our very eyes. They make a table, and some stools. They put walls up, and bring in a small set of stairs.

Every so often, one or other steps out of this space and goes to a filing cabinet, taking out a paper and reading. In this cabinet is the record of all that has gone before, all the history, all the mistakes made by humankind. We hear accounts of prisoners turfed out of vans, shot in the head for asking questions. Ancient trees cut down to make way for redevelopment. Demos against corrupt leaders. Pissing in fountains.

Our two prototype new humans fall out over the water allowance. How to resolve their differences? They try everything. One person one vote, first past the post. Proportional representation with a number of options as choices: rate your wishes 1, 2 or 3. ‘None of the above’ she says of choices 2 and 3, throwing a spanner in the works. All else fails, so they resort to scissors, paper, stone. Best of three, she declares when he wins. There’s always a way to get the result you need.

At one point he says ‘ I didn’t realise Paradise could be this boring’ and there lies the rub. Everything clean and bright and nice is not enough. If we have our basic needs met, we long for more. We’re willing to bite that apple in our longing for knowledge and experience and take our chances. To be thrown out into the nasty, dirty, messy, marvellously chaotic world outside. And so it goes.

The Paradise Project is created by Third Angel in collaboration with Mala Voadora – their former collaboration What I Heard About the World was shortlisted for a Total Theatre Award in 2012, and both productions boast sharp writing, great performance, and excellent scenography that goes beyond good design, making the visual landscape of the piece a crucial element of the content.

It is interesting to note that conception and design of The Paradise Project is credited jointly to both collaborating companies and the two performers, implying that the creation of the design was in intrinsic part of the devising of the piece. This is how it feels – words, physical action, and visual imagery seamlessly interweaved. Both actors are totally at home in their stage environment, a delight to watch and listen to – you really do forget they are acting a lot of the time, which is perhaps the highest compliment.

The Paradise Project is presented at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe as part of Northern Stage at Summerhall. 

Photographic flipbooks, sometimes called flicker-books. You know what I mean? Those little things you flick with your thumb, producing an instant mini animation? Volker Gerling makes them. He  picks a subject, asks them to pose, takes 36 clickety-click shots in 12 seconds, then uses high-quality photographic paper to produce beautiful and unique artworks.

He shows us what it feels like to be one of his models by turning his camera on us. We, his audience, pose for a group photo, but as the 12 seconds  – a long time! – unfolds, and we are amused and distracted by the loud shutter clicks, we dissolve a little, smile, blink, wipe our hair from our brow, glance at our neighbour. That’s what happens.

Gerling then tells us how he finds his subjects, and how he disseminates his work. At first he played it safe and went to the arty bars and cafes of hometown Berlin, picking subjects, and showing the small flipbooks, free to audience, but with donations gratefully accepted. Then he realised he needed to be braver, to go further afield, literally and metaphorically. Out into the small villages of Germany, and beyond, he went – and still goes. He’s walked over 3,500km so far.

What he does is walk with a tent on his back, and on his front a tray (a cigarette-girl or popcorn-seller style tray, attached to his shoulders). He carries no food or money. He makes friends. He invites people to view his exhibition of flipbooks. He also sometimes approaches people and asks them to be models for a new book. We hear stories about the people he has met: Alfred, who invites him into his house to show him the bed where his wife died, and who still has a wardrobe full of snazzy suits from his youth, offers Gerling a glass of Schnapps and some chocolate; a young boy called Alex who is swimming in the canal with his friends, chuffed that he has been singled out to be a model; a mother and daughter called Sofia and Francesca, who are more like friends, and who write small texts about each other for the artist.

This small but perfectly formed theatre show is so much more than a lecture-demonstration about the walks and the flipbooks. It is also an investigation of the very nature and processes of both photography and cinema. Gerling stands at a lectern with an overhead projector, and he slowly flips through a book, a simple portrait of one person. The slight flickers in her eyelids, the little smile at the corner of her mouth that comes and goes… it is beautiful, utterly beautiful. We meet a whole host of people who are subjects of flipbook portraits. A handsome Iranian man whose body is wasting away; three teenagers, a loving couple and their gooseberry friend who stares ahead embarrassed as her friends kiss; a family of four, the smallest child wiggling and the bigger one pulling faces. They have simple unemotive titles: Older Man with Tie, Man with Baseball Cap, Woman With Shawl etc. One flipbook called Two Boys Fishing has no movement, seemingly. Each book is flicked three times, and after the second showing of this one, Gerling says ‘look at the grass by the boy on the right’s shoulder” and yes –it’s moving in the wind. He quotes St Paul: ‘What we see comes from what we do not see.’

Our artist is mostly interested in people, but he has also branched out to do time-lapse flipbooks of apartment blocks (one shot every 2o minutes throughout the night), the moon moving across a night sky behind a cathedral, and an extraordinary ‘film’ of a candle in a cafe burning down over 7 hours.

Because, yes – these are films, this is cinema. Flipbook cinema, but cinema. Portraits in motion, in fact. Seeing the images on a big screen, we believe we are seeing moving image. Because we are. The filming process is no different – it is just that the gap between frames is smaller. Gerling celebrates the gaps, and exploits the play with time offered by his process, flicking through the books at different speeds to produce different effects.

A truly charming and thought-provoking show that gets to the core of what it means to capture an image; and that also adds a beautiful example to the growing body of work created by artists for whom walking is at the heart of their practice.

Portraits in Motion is presented at Summerhall by Aurora Nova.