Midsummer magic: a life-changing experience in the Botanics

 

 Susie Brown puts finishing touches to 600 pieces of black bamboo: her sculpture Natural Progression becomes a stage setting for dancers on midsummer eve.

There’s a serious theme rippling beneath the music but come and enjoy the sheer, mad fun of it all. Listen to robots playing Chinese instruments in the Palm House and watch Tai Chi dancers on the lawn while bamboo percussionists from Thailand beat out a trail of discovery to the Chinese Hillside.  

These are just fragments of the spectacular Dialogues of Wind and Bamboo, now being rehearsed behind the scenes for the midsummer happening in the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.  On Saturday evening around 50 artists, musicians and dancers come together from Far East and across Scotland to create a unique intercultural experience in the Botanics.  And it is all free.

The creative force behind it is Kimho Ip (that's him on the right), a talented young composer musician, who is gaining a reputation for helping audiences rediscover Chinese music – with a contemporary twist

Instead of the concert hall, his venues are more likely to be museums, market places and cafes. And now the Botanics where he mixes experimental pop of Edinburgh band FOUND with evocative Shanghai Jazz and old Cantonese melodies.  

The serious purpose is to help people reconnect with both nature and culture in a fast changing world.  “I am not particularly Chinese,” says Kimho who comes from Hong Kong but finished his education in Germany and Edinburgh. “But this culture is part of my DNA and it seems a shame if we lose such precious pieces of our past.”

The Botanics holds the biggest collection of Chinese plants outside China; a resource now being used to reintroduce endangered species to the natural world. In the same way, Kimho’s intercultural performance reconnects with Chinese cultural traditions that are fast disappearing in their original habitat.

Stephen Blackmore, the Regius Keeper of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh,  welcomes Kimho’s production with the enthusiasm of a man who enjoys music (he owns and plays a collection of guitars). For him, music adds a vital element to the Garden.

“We want people to engage with huge issues of environmental change in the world,” he says.   “So the richer the experience we can provide, the more senses we can connect with, the more likely we will achieve that life changing experience.”

Find out more on the website for Dialogues of Wind and Bamboo. There’s a YouTube video of the robots in the Palm House.   And sculpture and sound installations are on display in the Garden until at least 29 June.