PART splurge, part personal/political exposition Daddy (⭑⭑⭑⭑☆) convenes late evening punters. In due course, we learned that Daddy’s author and performer Joel Bray is also fuelled by a brew of anxiety and party spirit.

Initially he lounges, pretty in skimpy pink, in a realm that’s feather-cosseted but also ominous. He’s an inviting, tactile, kind of a guy: Australian too. Let’s add undeniable and discard our comforting pint to wade in and kiss his proffered instep. Consensually we can then whiten him with icing sugar — which presently cakes.

Do we enjoy movies that have no close-ups or shifts of perspective? Will we resist being episodically configured in this performer’s personal space? In any case, his crucial First Nations post-colonial story pulls us like the tide.

By stealth, this proud Wiradjuri man imprints his complex being, whilst making the event seem chatty and gracious. Small dances grow out of nowhere, including some ethnic sequences that vex his will.

His autobiographical monologue lights upon the dashing gents who, by filling his felt void, have momentarily engendered a craved self-worth. Here, my inner heckle tells me this can’t be the essential measure. Mr Bray is before us because peers think it warranted – as do all present. It’s truly poignant when people can’t bask in what they’ve earned.

Daddy’s gluey contradictions bind something that’s telling and ambiguous. Our hero may, in passing, lament the compulsive drear of weightlifting and the obligation to produce a beach-ready torso, but when we spring to our feet at his instruction, habitual duty has miraculously fathered a positive agenda.

Charlotte Mclean and Jack Anderson got involved with competitive folkloric events as children, back when their obsession had no filter. Somewhat post-trophy, they now combine with musician Malin Lewis in Not For Glory (⭑⭑⭑⭑☆) a performance that views bracing origins through a misty baffle of afterthought.

All over the place, millennia of wordless consensual actions have gelled into dances that anyone could perform. Where youngsters overflow the mould, communities find their ethnic dances could be codified, ramped, and competitively rewarded.

This kind of historical flex ushers gain and loss. Not For Glory’s team choreograph their personal experience of commodification and its facets. They infiltrate a hidden-in-plain-sight cultural edifice and emerge with replenished but volatile affection for it all.

Mistress of the sword, the honed stagger and the biting text, Charlotte Mclean is this show’s fey compass. Whippet-slim Jack Anderson’s set pieces percuss footwork and fireworks. Elsewhere, he braids the show’s ideas together with a runnel of molten gyrations. Statuesque Malin Lewis’ plangent pipes shapeshift to become a haggis, a slow barge, a CPR patient and a specimen for vivisection.

Comforting earplugs are proffered in lieu of bagpipe excess. Cosily, the show winds down with explicatory monologues. Eloquent for the fact of their happening, these aren’t written to compel. Opportunistically, I sided, in some sense, with non-verbal/foreign attendees and inserted the spongy buffers. My on-mute regard brought forth some mulling.

Wit and swagger are evident here, even when cloaked in ambivalence. Flamboyance may feign sleep under the flag of a titular disclaimer. But glory will out.

Daddy runs at Summerhall until August 31. Tickets: summerhallarts.co.uk 
Not For Glory runs at Dancebase until August 23. Tickets: edfringe.com