DAB and Cielo Raso at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2025

For the first time, the Basque Country is set to represent the Edinburgh Festival with two professional dance companies.

The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, one of the largest and most significant cultural events in the world, takes place every year in August in Edinburgh, Scotland, alongside the Edinburgh International Festival. It serves as a crucial platform for artists because of its visibility and networking opportunities, but it also requires significant financial and organisational effort from the companies to make a meaningful impact. The vast majority of companies from across the globe that attend the Fringe invest significantly to ensure their presence there.

The Etxepare Basque Institute, in collaboration with ADDE, the association of dance professionals in the Basque Country, has opened the call for proposals for Basque professional dance companies to take part in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (Edinburgh, Scotland) 2025.

Thanks to this collaboration, Dance Base, Scotland´s National Centre for Dance, has selected two Basque companies for its 2025 programme: DAB and Cielo Raso.

DAB

Marina Eskisabel and Iker Sanz are the visionaries behind DAB.

Marina and Iker, two passionate souls with a love for dance, were both part of the Dantzaz company. This shared experience ignited a collaboration that ultimately blossomed into the DAB dance company. In 2022, they made the decision to embark on this new project, united by a vision of utilising dance to analyse and communicate important societal issues.

DAB will be offering 6 performances of the show ‘Noeud’ between the 19th and 24th of August as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe programme.

CIELO RASO

Cielo Raso is a dance company founded in 2010 by choreographer and dancer Igor Calonge in the Basque Country, a region with a strong identity in its cultural and artistic expression.

The identity and its evolution towards contemporary expression serve as the foundation of Cielo Raso’s work, which harnesses tradition, the power of the body, resilience, primitive struggle, symbols, and poetics to consistently present a fresh physical language and audacious outcomes.

Cielo Raso has developed a unique style in its approach to the stage, and its dedication has garnered growing recognition internationally. Eighteen creations highlight the intensity of their work.

Their productions have been seen in France, Italy, Poland, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Panama, Paraguay and Finland.