Give Me a Reason to Live (Dancebase, Edinburgh)

At one point in Give Me a Reason to Live, Claire Cunningham just stands in front of us. She stops moving and stands – not still exactly, but unaided. She stands and she shakes slightly, gritting her teeth and regulating her breathing to maintain the strain. Her thighs start to spasm, her knees start to knock. She rolls slightly on her rounded ankles, but she never picks up the crutches by her side.

Inspired by Hieronymus Bosch's drawings of crippled beggars, Give Me a Reason To Live frames itself against religious art. Backed by church bells and choral song, Cunningham puts herself through a series of tests: of strength, of endurance, perhaps even of faith. She inches herself away from a wall, crutches at full stretch, and rocks herself over their handles, precariously balanced. The objects' every possibility is explored. Yet standing there, in pain, she's challenging us as much as herself: ought we to help or to let her be?

The bodies Bosch drew were twisted and raw, their limbs rotating awkwardly or hanging down limp. Cunningham recreates and questions those shapes, folding her frame around her aids and, at one point, seeming almost to spatchcock herself with them. She strips down to a slip and lets us consider her shape, only without the artist's mediating gaze.

Though only intermittently forceful, Cunningham's imagery is consistently vital. She ends pinned to the back wall, elevated on elongated crutches, writhing in a pool of divine light: a soul leaving its body at last.

Give Me a Reason to Live continues until 29 August 2015