We’re back!

That’s right. Yesterday evening’s proceedings kicked off with a wine reception in the Clarence and carried on well into overtime with a headphone disco in Meeting House Square. In between, I raved with actor and fitness guru Pall Gale about the most revolting film ever, discussed how childbirth can level the intellectual playing field in men’s favour with a step-dancing PR consultant, and drank at least one glass too many. Ah, the hazards of festival blogging…

Now, any given year presents festival organisers with their own hazards and crises. But 2010 promises to test the limits of even the most agile team. Already the trollish Eyjafjallajökull has made its mark in the Irish festival calendar, most notably Galway’s Cúirt literary festival. The concern must now be that travel restrictions will similarly affect  DDF 2010.  Indeed Philip Connaughton  – performing in Rex’s Secondary Sources – was telling me how, right after his flight landed yesterday, Irish airspace was shut down.

That said, the way Maureen Kennelly and her team – and the Irish literary sector as a whole – reacted to April’s madness was revelatory. The generosity of spirit, time and forbearance shown by all was truly inspiring. And if Laurie Uprichard’s words last night were any indication, that same sanguine character and settled determination will shape the dance world’s response to any upheaval.

Of course, the centre-piece of the evening was junk ensemble’s Five Ways to Drown. A world premiere and the festival’s inaugural performance, Megan and Jessica Kennedy’s latest work continues an engagement with memory – and the ambiguities inherent to any act of remembrance – to be found in their earlier works, Rain Party and Drinking Dust.  A quality of vivid fragmentation is present throughout, one where apparent discontinuities of action still somehow manage to resonate together to create meaning. Along with a reoriented seating arrangement and the contributions of Aedín Cosgrove and Denis Clohessy, the overall effect is akin to that of a dream.

As always, the choreography is polished and engaging. The cleverness and physicality of movement – where bodies spiral, cling and clamber, where dancers may fling themselves or be flung -  all this appeals and intrigues. And yet last night, something else caught my attention. And that was the abiding quality of each performer. The Kennedy sisters easily capture a spectator’s attention…but sometimes, I’m sure intentionally, in a way that is distant, or a little removed. As if giving form to an impersonal archetypal principle.

By contrast, Lee Clayden seems to embody the humanity, fragility and heart necessary to give the finale its poignant impact. It’s a poignancy that reminds us how, in watching this, we watch a soul caught, dancing, between Scylla and Charybdis.

And that’s why this show works, I think.

It’s not the undoubted technical ingenuity and craft of all involved. It’s how it reminds us that we’re all drowning, right from our first breath. And that each breath we take means something.

Okay, so that’s Five Ways to Drown. If you can, get a ticket. But even if you can’t, we have 23 artists/companies still to catch, from 9 countries, in eight venues.. And only one game in town.

So let’s go. Let’s count it down…