The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is full of mini-seasons: presentations of work from home and abroad. As part of the Danish presentation – #Danish – the Granhøj Dans Company and choreographer Palle Granhøj This is not Romeo and Juliet (Zoo south side, ★★★★), a piece that subtly makes an obvious statement: love is better than war.

In it, four dancers, two young, two older, and two musicians (a cellist and a violinist) explore ways of expressing their passion by dancing around each other, sometimes formally, sometimes wildly, sometimes lip-locking on the floor or chasing each other, sad and forlorn. The musicians are a revelation, playing bits of Prokofiev and Berlioz while tangling their limbs together.

From Performing Arts Made in Germany, the choreographers Maria Chiara de’ Nobili and Alexander Miller’s company Miller de Nobili pack (Dance base, ★★★★), a study of group dynamics that examines the relationships between five men who define themselves through their ability as dancers. What’s striking is the way the movements – head turns, one-armed handstands, held poses and smooth twists – express emotion and thought as well as skill. The men tentatively touch hands, face each other, strike b-boy poses, offer comfort and provocation. It’s smooth, clever and absolutely worth watching.

From Australia, under the banner of House of Oz, comes Lewis Major, a director and choreographer who has worked with Russell Maliphant. The influence is evident not only in the clear clarity of Maliphant’s Two x Threewhich opens a program called triptych (Dance base, ★★★), but in Major’s own pieces, which share Maliphant’s interest in moving bodies under light. Some effects are stunning: a dancer appears to stand in the center of an arc of pure white that whirs around her like a blender blade. Two dancers emerge from the shadows for a duet, the woman never touching the ground, wrapping her body around her partner in slinky shapes.

Meanwhile, Dundee-based Scottish Dance Theatre is flying the home flag with a double bill presented as part of the festival’s Made in Scotland show, opening with the dynamic vitality of Roser López Espinosa’s The herd (Zoo south side, ★★★★), in which the dancers form a V formation and then launch themselves into synchronized patterns of jumps and punches.

Birds are evoked – flat backs, arms outstretched – but not too much. It is the way the movement washes through the group that is so captivating. At the end of their efforts, the dancers collapse, then slowly gather themselves, picking up each other’s motionless bodies, bending and falling with astonishing control before a finale of hasty runs and gyrating turns. The light (by Jou Serra) is white as a sky.

Moving cloud (Zoo south side, ★★★), is a piece of interiors and murky smoke, in beautiful contrast. Before the assembled musicians of Trip, a traditional Celtic band from Glasgow, dancers in smocks, kilts and big trousers, arms twisted and feet slick, crouch and tremble, their movements alternately contorted and uninhibited. Choreographer Sofia Nappi has worked with Hofesh Shechter and studied the Gaga whole-body movement method – and it shows; yet the mood and sense of repressed emotion are her own.