You might see some of these characters while you wander down Grafton Street at lunch time and tea time over the next few days… Keep an eye out for unusual behaviour and more vigorous dancing that is normal among passers-by…

Just having a stretch, you know yourself…

Anyone seen where my toddler nipped off to??

We’re just waiting for coffee…

Is anyone else feeling a bit dizzy??

Catch more (In)Visible Dancing today, tomorrow and Friday. Grand Finale is on Sunday May 20 at 4pm. Bring your kids, your granny and the dog!

All photos above taken by Laura Speedwing, DDF volunteer.

How do you capture the pulse of a country? French choreographer Yuval Pick has made a fairly good stab at it with Score, a staggering piece soundtracked by snippets of audio recordings taken in Israel, the country of his birth. There was a sense of the (50% French, it seemed) audience being pinned en masse to the edge of their seats in the Space Upstairs at Project Arts Centre last night as the three astonishing dancers on stage surged through the performance.

The recordings capture different facets of life in Israel, by turns modern, traditional, military, religious, commercial, bucolic and urban, and the movement changes to reflect these shifting audio backdrops. Composer Bertrand Larrieu has worked the soundbites into a score that surges and recedes with the lub-dub of the heartbeat of a country that Pick describes as one of “‘high-tension’ energy with strong emotions shaped by survival and emergencies and raw, unmitigated feelings”.

Against these shifts in the style of the movement, the marked ferocity that characterises it remains constant. There is nothing hesitant or half-hearted in the performance – the tightly-wound choreography doesn’t allow for any hint of doubt. The virtuosity and athleticism of these three dancers (Lazare Huet, Anna Massoni and Antoine Roux-Briffaud) is astounding, the opening segment in particular a marvel of complexity as they pulse together in a single hinged, alternately collapsing and expanding unit.

While certain sequences towards the close of the piece tended slightly towards the meandering and overly-repetitive, this is a minor criticism that doesn’t detract from the impact of a performance that received a near-full standing ovation. This is one of the most affecting things I’ve had the pleasure of viewing in dance recently – go see it!

At 7pm last night, the rain-washed courtyard outside the Samuel Beckett Theatre in Trinity was filled with expectant audience members, huddled in their autumn finery though we’re well into May. Liz Roche Company opened DDF on an eerie and unsettling note with the sold-out Body and Forgetting, an inquisition into the endlessly convoluted processes of remembering, forgetting and renewal and appropriately toned for the sodden summer we’re having.

A film projection of a desolate corridor (calling to mind an asylum) loomed behind the four dancers, an extension to the stage housing recorded ghosts of the live performers. Body and Forgetting is full of fragments, physical objects and tropes of movement that are both echoes of memory and touchstones of comfort. Whilst the recorded performers dance in the ghostly corridor, the ones on stage struggle to catch up with their past selves. Dense with signals and steeped in atmosphere thanks to geometric lighting by Sinead Wallace and a mournful, almost western, score by Denis Roche, Body and Forgetting is an exquisite elegy to the broken, stuttering and insistent memories that form the backdrop to our lives.

This elegiac tone continued with the second, shorter piece of the evening, Sarah Dowling’s The Wake. A sparse stage-set (plain wooden chair, scrubbed wooden table, metal bowl) was the scene for an elegant duet by two Royal Ballet soloists. The melancholy lines of the dance were reinforced by live musical accompaniment from two traditional Irish musicians, framing this sure-footed and pared-down portrayal of grief comingled with joyful remembering in the aftermath of a death.

A sombre and understated beginning to this year’s programme, but one that was rich with meaning and exemplary of a particular brand of Irish choreography that is beautiful in its direct simplicity. There is important dance here – if you can get a hold of one of the remaining tickets for tonight’s performance, it’s not to be missed!

MONTPELLIER DANSE (FR)
JUNE 25- JULY 5, 2011

This year’s Montpellier Danse Festival had a strand of work from Tel Aviv (a selection from the annual International Exposure at the Suzanne Dellal Centre in December) and another strand of circus-based work.  In between there were large spectacles in the Corum such as the astounding Royal Ballet of Flanders performing William Forsythe’s Artifact, and smaller works at the new Cunningham Studio at L’Agora as well as at outlying theatres.

In a new programme development, Raimund Hoghe was invited to be the Associate Artist and was in residence throughout the two weeks of the Festival.  On six afternoons, he presented an “open door” in which he spoke with other artists (Franko B), showed DVD’s of artists who had been inspirational to him (Maya Plisetskaya, Kazuo Ohno, Pina Bausch) and artists with whom he works (Ornella Balestra, Lorenzo de Brabandere, Emmanuel Eggermont and Luca Giacomo Schulte).  A final performance, entitled Montpellier, 4 July 2011, was a sort of homage to the courtyard of L’Agora.  In the fading daylight, without any theatrical lighting, vignettes chosen from Hoghe’s repertoire unfolded in the shadows of the 14th century former convent.  It was truly breathtaking.

Bartabas, who in the 80’s performed an amazing work with a horse called Zingaro, created a new work with Butoh choreographer Ko Murobushi incorporating four horses that was extraordinary in its visual imagery and force.  The lighting, by Françoise Michel, who designed the lights for Sui Generis in this year’s Dublin Dance Festival, was central to the work.

A bit of unplanned excitement jarred the opening of Batsheva Dance Company’s performance of Project 5 by Ohad Naharin.  Two men dropped from the roof of the outdoor theatre at L’Agora onto one of the lighting catwalks and dropped pro-Palestinian leaflets onto the stage and into the audience.  The French audience engaged in some back-and-forth conversation with the protestors until DDF’s 2009 intern, Jean-François Chapon, saved the day (or night) by escorting them out (followed by security police).  The company showed remarkable aplomb in their performance of this episodic work which incorporates segments from five different pieces.

Other artists/companies I saw included Deborah Hay and Laurent Pichaud in a playful duet; Montpellerain Didier Théron; Israeli artists Emmanuel Gat (now based in France), Barak Marshall (Los Angeles-born and partially based there), Yuval Pick (now based in France), Oded Graf & Yossi Berg (partially based in Copenhagen) and Niv Sheinfeld & Oren Laor (based in Israel); juggler (with a lot of ice!) Phia Ménard and contortionist Angela Laurier.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

One afternoon, I attended a seminar entitled Une Politique Patrimoniale pour la Danse at which the six panelists (from the Dance programme of the Ministry of Culture and from the National Dance Centre) spoke about policy and programmes of support for the art form.  The most interesting thing for me was the numbers.

In 2010, a total of €109M was given to dance in the following categories:

Direct Aid

€68M including
€ 7M to artists including 250 choreographers and 40 incorporated companies
€15M to the 19 National Choreographic Centres
€42M to the Paris Opera Ballet
€ 4M to the regional Opera Ballet companies

€20M to the Maison de la Danse in Lyon, 70 National Theatres, 40 Platforms,
8 Choreographic Development Centres and an unspecified number Festivals for the presentation of work

€8M to the National Dance Centre in Paris

€13M to National Theatre of Chaillot, which has been designated as the centre for dance in Paris.

It is difficult to compare budgets as the population of France is 62.5 million, whereas Ireland is a country of 4.5 million and the funding bodies work very differently.  It is interesting to note, however, that the Arts Council had a total budget of just €68M in 2010. But while we might dream about working with generous funding like this, we shouldn’t forget about what we’ve achieved with much less!

Megan Kennedy, Co-Artistic Director of junk ensemble, was the third of our “Access all Areas” pass holders. Here’s her reflection on her busy evenings during DDF 2011:

“I had the great fortune of being presented with one of three “Access All Areas” passes, gaining entry to every Dublin Dance Festival performance, workshop and lecture. I’ve never won so as much as a romantic dinner for two at Burdock’s chipper so you can imagine my surprise.

With this pass I was able to attend performances otherwise sold out or difficult to get into, and could therefore see nearly everything in the diverse, colourful, exciting programme of 2011.

My two crème de la crème highlights included:

Cédric Andrieux in his solo performance choreographed by Jérôme Bel, particularly his sardonic love for his tie-dyed pink unitard and the choreographed clatter of the performer falling from the fly towers of the Grand Canal Theatre into a heap of golden rice. (I do know he didn’t actually fall from the heavens…) Cloud Gate was a stunningly beautiful spectacle made all the more beautiful by the largest audience to ever attend a contemporary dance performance in Ireland.

Thank you to all who made “Access all Areas” possible and to the entire DDF team for another superb year. Chip supper is on me.”

Elena Giannotti performed in Fearghus O Conchúir’s powerful and beautiful work, Tabernacle at Project Arts Centre on the closing weekend of DDF 2011. This is her reflection on what it meant to her to have an ‘Access all Areas’ package:

“May in Dublin means Dance Festival.

What is a festival? maybe something like: a period of time set aside for feasting and celebration.

If I had to give someone going to a festival any advice I would say: see as much as you can, meet as many people as you can, talk as much as you can, dance as much as you can.  (After all this, maybe drink as much as you can, but this is another story…)

Another question: what is a dancer? maybe something like: someone who likes to participate, someone who likes to ‘ access all areas’.

However, we dancers with stretchy legs but rigid pockets, can’t afford the ‘as much as you can’ festival philosophy most of the time….
…but then came the Fund it present: an ‘Access all Areas’ package!

What can I say? Thank you Thank you Thank you to all generous and caring donors!

This year at DDF I have been pleasurably overwhelmed by art, visions, actions, faces, thoughts.

I have been a dancer, performer, workshop attender, audience member, passer-by and visitor.

The eastern wind has taken my heart and thoughts on an imaginative journey. The performance of Eiko and Koma and meeting them at their workshop were particularly inspiring and opened new routes for me to oniric fields for my practice.

Many thanks again and I am looking forward to returning the gift and becoming a donor next time at DDF 2012!”

Maria Nilsson Waller, whose short work Walker was featured in Re-Presenting Ireland, was one of the lucky artists who received an ” Access all Areas” pass, enabling her to attend every event during the Festival. Here’s what she had to share about her experience:

“One day, in the middle of rehearsals I received an unexpected phone call to let me know that I would receive a free “Access all Areas” pass to Dublin Dance Festival, thanks to the Festival’s Fund it campaign. As an independent artist I would not have been able to afford tickets to many of the performances myself and a tough selection process was already going on in my mind. What to see and what to skip? Take a chance on something risky or invest safely in performances I knew I would like? I am so glad I got this opportunity to see all of the pieces during the festival, especially since it turned out that some of my favourite performances were not on my original priority list.

There was one performance  in particular at Project Arts Centre, by Javanese dancer Mugiyono Kasido, that really touched me. Rooted in Javanese traditional dance, he is one of the most highly skilled performers I have ever seen, with a body control to die for. Even though my cultural and artistic background is very different I was surprised by how easily I could receive and connect to his work, and even recognise many of my own particular interests and ideas in it. I did not expect that I, a Swedish-born, Irish-based contemporary dancer and choreographer would meet at Dublin Dance Festival a man from the other side of our planet and see him embody and master so many of my own artistic visions. To me this was a reminder that dance truly is a universal art form and has the power to connect people from different cultures and circumstances. I wish to stay in touch with Mr Kasido as I think he would be able to teach me many things. Hopefully another opportunity to meet him will present itself in the not too distant future.”

On the final weekend we were treated to the absurd humour of Rafal Dziemidok of Koncentrat and the World Premiere of Tabernacle, an intensely emotional and many-layered work by leading independent Irish choreographer Fearghus Ó Conchúir. A full house celebrated the opening night – and we enjoyed one last reception at Project Arts Centre.

Audience members share their thoughts.

DDF Board member, Helen Meany congratulates the artists and performers.

Fearghus Ó Conchúir thanks all those involved in the creation of Tabernacle.

After a mesmerising performance, guests of DDF and the Taipei Representative Office in Ireland, lead by Dr. Harry Tseng, enjoyed a lively reception at The Circle Club of the Grand Canal Theatre and toasted to Mr. Lin Hwai-min and his superb company.

Guests enjoying the reception at The Circle Club

L to R: DDF Chair, Dermot McLaughlin; DDF Director, Laurie Uprichard and Artistic Director of Cloud Gate, Mr. Lin Hwai-min (looking surprised by the flowers!)

Mr. Lin Hwai-min with Dr. Harry Tseng, the Taipei Representative in Ireland

Mr. Lin Hwai-min and Dr. Harry Tseng with guests of the Taipei Representative Office.

On the afternoon of Thursday May 26 a crowd of media-types came along to Grand Canal Theatre to catch a pre-performance glimpse of the stunning Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan. Dave went along too, and we think it’s safe to say the photos speak for themselves…

All photos by Dave Soanes

On Thursday May 26 over 1500 people came to see the extraordinary Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan perform one of their signature works, Songs of the Wanderers. Antanas was on hand to snap the crowds as they arrived at the beautiful Grand Canal Theatre…

Harry Tseng, Taipei Representative Office in Ireland and Laurie Uprichard, DDF

All photos by Studio Antanas Burokas.

On Monday May 23 we enjoyed performances by Balbir Singh Dance Company and Compagnie Sui Generis / Emmanuelle Vo Dinh, and after the performances we toasted to them in the lobby of Project Arts Centre. Antanas Burokas was on hand with his camera, take a look below at what and who he snapped:

Balbir Singh Dance Company, L – R: Bigg Taj, Ezekiel Oliveira, Sooraj Subramaniam, Balbir Singh, John Ball

Laurie Uprichard and John Scott toast to Emmanuelle Vo Dinh

L – R: Cindy Cummings, Robert Jackson, Solenne Racapé of Compagnie Sui Generis and Bernard Schmidt

All photos by Studio Antanas Burokas

On Tuesday May 24 Dave headed into DanceHouse to see how Fearghus Ó Conchúir and his dancers were getting on with rehearsals for Tabernacle. Take a look at their progress below!

All photos by Dave Soanes

Here’s a picture one of our visiting Japanese artists, Eiko Otake, sent us. One of the best things about the Festival is meeting such wonderful artists from all over the world, but we hate to see them leave and find ourselves missing these guys already!

L – R: Hiroaki Umeda, Val Bourne (DDF Board), Koma Otake, Eiko Otake, Cédric Andrieux, Betsy Gregory (Dance Umbrella) and Yasuko Yokoshi

On Thursday 19 and Friday 20 Indonesian dance artist Mugiyono Kasido wowed a packed Project Cube with two pieces – Bagaspati, which explored Javanese mythology through traditional dance and gamelan music, and the rather different (and very funny!) Kabar Kabur which took a satirical look at the fall of the Suharto regime in Indonesia. Dave caught a dress rehearsal, take a look:

All photos by Dave Soanes

The 2011 Festival is the second that the exquisite José Navas has been part of. In 2009 Navas brought the house down with his performance entitled Miniatures and from reports so far, it seems that this year’s performance, Personae, lived up to people’s high expectations. Here are some shots Dave took during the dress rehearsal:

All photos by Dave Soanes

After his second performance to a full house, Japanese artist Hiroaki Umeda joined moderator Ciaran O’Melia for a quick chat about his performance of Adapting for Distortion and Haptic. It was a really great insight into the thinking and preparation that goes into Hiroaki’s striking multimedia work, and a great follow-up to a top notch show!

Photos taken by Studio Antanas Burokas

Japanese artist Hiroaki Umeda performed this week in the Space Upstairs in Project Arts Centre. Both Tuesday 17 and Wednesday 18 May there was a full house pretty much spellbound by Umeda’s unique collision of digital sound, lighting technology and street dance-inspired movement. If you missed it, here’s the next best thing: Dave’s rehearsal shots below!

All photos by Dave Soanes

If you fancy shooting the breeze before or after a performance, we recommend heading to DDF’s Festival Club @ Project Arts Centre Bar. There’s always a good atmosphere, there are discounts on drinks if you’re a Festival Friend and you might even get to rub shoulders with some of the Festival artists. Fab!

Festival artists Eiko & Koma at the Festival Club @ Project Bar

All photos by Studio Antanas Burokas

Our team of photo bloggers has recently been joined by Antanas and Olga from Studio Antanas Burokas. Just before Cédric Andrieux took to the stage for his performance in Samuel Beckett Theatre on May 18, Antanas and Olga snapped him warming up.

All photos by Studio Antanas Burokas

DDF’s opening weekend continued in style on Saturday May 14 in the Courtyard at IMMA for Bumper 2 Bumper – the Festival’s headphone disco, presented in association with Phantom 105.2! DJs Claire Beck and Michelle Doherty were on the decks while the crowd put even our Festival artists to shame! Well, almost…

All photos by Studio Antanas Burokas.

Friday May 13 saw the opening of Dublin Dance Festival in the beautiful surroundings of IMMA! Stunning performances by Jodi Melnick and Yasuko Yokoshi were followed by a reception in the Chapel – take a look at the photos below.

The Chapel, IMMA

Dermot McLaughlin, chairman of the DDF board

Yasuko Yokoshi, Iseult Sheehy and Caroline Williams, DDF

Paul Johnson, Dance Ireland and Laurie Uprichard, DDF

Aideen McCole and Dermot McLaughlin, DDF

Sean Kissane, IMMA, Jodi Melnick and Burt Barr

With the Festival looming, on Wednesday it was high time to meet our team of volunteers! Some thirty wonderful people will join the DDF team to help at performances and events, and our meeting in the Resource Room in DanceHouse was a great chance to get to know them all and tell them what they’re in for over the next few weeks…

Ellie, Laurie and Kerry of DDF talking to the group

Ellie, Annette and Kerry of DDF talking to the group

All photos by Dave Soanes.

Here at Dublin Dance Festival we don’t want to have all the fun on our own – we want to share it with you! With this in mind, we’ve recruited two photo diarists – Al and Dave – to sneak you in behind the scenes and give you a glimpse of events leading up to and during the Festival.

Last Thursday (April 21) we joined forces with the Goethe Institute and the IFI for a preview screening of Wim Wenders’ Pina in 3D. The screening was followed by a conversation between DDF board member and former Tanztheater Wuppertal dancer Finola Cronin and the company’s current rehearsal director Barbara Kaufmann. Both the movie and the discussion were thoroughly enjoyable and insightful, and Al was on hand to capture a little of the evening:

L-R: Paul Johnson of Dance Ireland, Barbara Ebert of the Goethe Institute, Laurie Uprichard of DDF and Sarah Glennie of the IFI

L-R: Emmanuele D’Achon, French Ambassador, Hadrian Laroche of the French Embassy and Laurie Uprichard of DDF

Post-screening discussion with Finola Cronin (L) and Barbara Kaufmann of Tanztheater Wuppertal (R)

Laurie Uprichard of DDF enjoying the discussion!

All photos by Al Higgins. Keep your eyes peeled for the next installment!

Olwyn Lyons (third from left) with Raimund Hoghe and the cast of Young People, Old Voices. Barcelona, March 2011

Olwyn Lyons interned with DDF in 2010 and was also selected by Raimund Hoghe to join the cast of Young People, Old Voices, the centrepiece of the 2010 Festival, along with three other young Dubliners. She was recently invited to re-join the cast for two performances at the Mercat de les Flors in Barcelona. Here are her thoughts on her involvement in the performance:

“My dream came true last weekend when I was invited by highly acclaimed German Choreographer, Raimund Hoghe to perform once again in his outstanding piece Young People, Old Voices in the beautiful historic city of Barcelona. This was my second encounter with Raimund as I was lucky enough to have been selected to perform in Young People, Old Voices, the centrepiece of last year’s Dublin Dance Festival. Imagine my excitement as I packed my bags and headed to Dublin airport. I felt a cocktail of emotions ranging from excitement to trepidation. My worries were quelled when I was warmly welcomed with genuine affection by Raimund. I became known as ‘Olwyn from Dublin’ for the next few days.

Over the course of four days in enchanting Barcelona I worked intensively with Raimund rehearsing  just ten minutes metro journey from Barcelona’s bustling city centre. I immersed myself in the relaxed Spanish lifestyle sampling paella on La Ramblas and ambling through the Old Town away from the busy tourist areas. The opening night performance was, as usual, an exciting, anxious event, which thankfully ran smoothly and was warmly received by the public – the audience demanded five encores!

Throughout the experience I felt an immense  sense of pride representing Ireland abroad as a dancer, amongst a cast with a varied array of nationalities including French, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese and German. My performance was all the more memorable as after a nine years run of this wonderful show this was its final European performance. I am sure for Raimund it was a proud emotional experience. My Barcelona adventure unfortunately came to an end with a heart warming meal with Raimund and all cast members, enjoyed in the early hours of the morning in Plaza De Realia. This was definitely the perfect end to a stunning stay in Barcelona, between dance, good food and new found friends I could not have asked for anymore. The experience left me with a greater thirst for performing.”

Time Codes Dance Festival
25-27 October, 2010
Munich, Germany

AND

tanz_house Festival
28-29 October, 2010
Salzburg, Austria
Abigail Sebaly

Although the Oktoberfest hoopla dominates Munich’s reputation, the Time Codes Dance Festival showed a city that is also eager to embrace contemporary dance.  The festival’s opening night event was a multimedia happening coordinated by Richard Siegal (The Bakery).  The event took place at the Muffathalle, in what seemed to be a converted mill or turbine plant.  The ceilings were soaring and there was plenty of room for performers, audience, musicians, and even a bar.  Among the acts, there were men in traditional lederhosen dueling with a troupe of men in more contemporary garb, a group of women dancing with wine jugs balanced on their heads, hip hoppers, rollerskaters, singers, and projections flashing away on a scrim.  It was a movable feast, with the audience doing as much moving as the performers.

At the Gasteig, Raimund Hoghe presented a lecture demonstration on his work.  My interest in Hoghe was piqued after his choreography was featured as part of the 2010 DDF. Throughout the lecture, I was sorely wishing for instant German fluency (as I often wish that my brain had a meta translator, capable of recalibrating to wherever I am…).  But the movement sections were thought provoking.  At one point he demonstrated a segment wearing a dress and heels.  In another vignette, he transported glasses of milk around an empty stage.  His movements were both absorbing and mystifying; it was impossible to guess Hoghe’s next move.

At the Schwere Reiter, a new breed of Deja Donne performers presented Not Made for Flying.  I loved the Schwere Reiter performance space, with its whitewashed walls and high sloped roof.  A temporary seating bank was set up, and I sat in the first row.  Deja Donne founders Simone Sandroni and Lenka Flori worked with a group of Munich student dancers and Deja Donne dancers over a concentrated residency period to create the piece. Gravity and weight were common themes; through text and movement, the dancers mused how their movements would appear on planets with more or less gravity than Earth’s.  Although the cast was young, they had a mature presence.  I am excited to see what will come from Deja Donne next.

On the spur of the moment, I decided to hop over to Salzburg, which was also having a dance festival at the same time as Time Codes.  Salzburg is only about 2 hours from Munich via train, and you go through country that looks fit for a Ricola commercial.  Salzburg has a new performance complex, ARGEkultur Saal, at one end of the city.  The night I arrived at the tanz_house Festival, I went to a performance by Beda Percht and the Cataracts.  The piece was completely in German, and included a woman sewing a pillow with a sewing machine, a man reading from a German translation about explorer Ernest Shackleton’s explorations in Antarctica, and another women creating a map-like mandala out of stones.

On my second day in Salzburg, it snowed for the first time of the season. Amid the slush and intermittent whiteouts, I trekked up to the Capuchin monastery, which offered an expansive view of the city.  The monastery juts up against an extensive series of walking trails.  Because of the snow, these paths were mostly deserted, and I walked in the magical quiet until cold fingers and toes started to take over.

Thanks to the likes of Mozart, Salzburg is an eternally musical town, and it’s hard not to miss the many concert posters, people walking around with instrument cases, and the numerous music schools.  With a few hours to kill (read: needing a place to plop down!)  I wandered into a student solo clarinet concert at the Universitat Mozarteum, put on by kids who will no doubt one day be populating Europe’s most famous orchestras.

On my final evening in town, I saw Roberto Olivan‘s Bodhi Project perform a piece about female identity.

December Dance Festival
11-16 December, 2010
Brugge, Belgium
Abigail Sebaly

On the heels of the Ice Hot Nordic Dance Platform, I headed directly from Sweden to Belgium (thank you again, Ryanair!) and stayed for a week of performances as part of the December Dance Festival.  Samme Raeymaekers, Artistic Coordinator for the Concertgebouw Brugge, explained that the festival is curated in an alternating fashion; one year a guest curator is chosen to select the festival’s content (past curators include Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker).  In alternate years, the festival highlights artists from a particular geographical region.  2010 was a regional year, with a focus on Central Europe.

The first piece that I saw was Within, by Milan Tomášik, who is also a member of the Les SlovaKs collective.  The lighting for the piece was particularly beautiful in the way it bordered and structured an otherwise empty stage.  Tomášik’s movements were thoughtful and I was drawn to his delicate hand gestures.  This piece was performed in what appeared to be a “pop up” black box space backstage of the Stadsschouwburg.  The towering height of backstage rafters added to the intensity of the piece.

That same night, Sasha Waltz & Guests were on the main stage at the Concertgebouw Brugge.  The set for the piece Impromptus consisted of two overlapping platforms, angled at such a steep rake that the dancers seemed liable to tumble at any minute.  At one point they covered themselves in richly colored powder, and then later got these pigments wet, creating runnels of deep browns, reds, and oranges which bled down the steep raked surface.  A pianist and singer provided a bonus of a live performance of Schubert’s Impromptus.

Les SlovaKs collective performed at the MaZ performance space in Sint Andres, just west of the city center.  It was nice to venture away from the crush of Brugge’s Christmas market visitors and check out this less mobbed part of town.  Les SlovaKs’ Journey Home left many audience members smiling.  In spite of their diverse physical proportions and movement styles, the five Les SlovaKs cast members seemed like brothers contributing to a common purpose. Simon Thierrée, a dynamic musician, sat on stage throughout the piece playing various instruments, and at one point he even joined in singing a Slovak song with the rest of the cast.

On my last night, I saw Josef Nadj‘s Cherry-Brandy, a dark piece that used Anton Chekov’s Swan Song, among other sources, as its inspiration.  The piece had an extensive array of props, projections, and bodies in silhouette.  At times, the performers began to resemble the 2-D black paper cutouts more than actual people.

Because the festival’s performances were mainly at night, I occupied my days with activities like going to an exhibition of Van Eyck and other old Dutch masters at the Groeninge Museum.  And of course things often turn to food in a region that is known for its chocolate, frites, and waffles, among many other yummies.  I went to a chocolate museum and saw a live demonstration of pralines being prepared.  Apparently the integrity of Belgian chocolate is so high because it uses only cocoa butter, whereas chocolate from other sources may use cheaper palm or vegetable oils (Hershey’s, be afraid…).

Brugge is lucky to have gems like the December Dance Festival, which make it a significant stop on the culture map.

Budapest Autumn Festival
October 8-13, 2010
Budapest, Hungary
Abigail Sebaly

In mid October, I headed out on my first journey under DDF’s auspices to the Budapest Autumn Festival.  Laurie’s eyes got particularly bright when she talked about her own travels to the city, so I had a feeling that I was going to enjoy the experience.

First, a bit of setting: I stayed in an apartment on the Pest side of the Danube (or the Duna, as it is referred to in Hungary).  Most of the Autumn Festival’s activities took place in various venues in this area of the city.  Many of the buildings in the Pest side of town are soaring with long windows, beautiful external detail work, and hidden courtyards.  At night, it was a treat to peer up at the windows, where there might be silhouetted figures smoking on ledges, or glimpses of high-ceilinged interiors.  Budapest also has one of the most efficient transport systems that I’ve ever experienced, so getting between festival events usually meant only a short walk to a tram or train.

Laurie connected me with several of the masterminds behind the festival, including Gergely Tello of the Workshop Foundation.  I first met Gergely and his wife after a screening of international dance film shorts, and he continued to be a generous and knowledgeable host (and translator!) throughout my stay.   After the film shorts screening, I also saw Louise Lecavalier and her company perform at TRAFÓ, a multidisciplinary arts center.  Lecavalier, formerly of La La La Human Steps, has formed her own ensemble in Montreal and is actively commissioning and performing new works.  She is an incredible force on stage.  After the show, I had the pleasure of meeting up with her other dancers and touring team over a meal of hearty Hungarian chicken soup.

The following night, I saw Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui‘s D’Avant at the Madách Színház.  The set for the evening-length work looked like a life-size version of the game Mousetrap, with all manner of scaffolding, ladders, ropes, poles and trap doors that give away.  When a harmony of acapella voices started to sing what sounded like Gregorian chants, I looked around for the musicians, but it was actually Larbi and his fellow performers.  They kept up the vocals throughout the whole work, once even giving Bonnie Tyler her due with a random rendition of “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”  I was moved by Larbi’s work, and the rest of the audience was too, as their applause fell into synchronous claps through many curtain calls.

My final show of the festival was also particularly memorable.  I started the evening with a shuttle bus ride to the Artus Contemporary Art Space on the Buda side of the river.  The Artus collective leases space in an old textile (?) factory.  There are two formal performance spaces, one of huge bowling alley-esque proportions and the other more modest and heated. But this performance occurred in the unrefurbished part of the building, a maze of concrete rooms, paint peeling, dusty, bare, and echoey.  At the outset of the show, we viewers were offered coats and blankets to ward off the cold, and then artist Cilla Nagy lead us on a site specific journey, inhabiting various rooms with short performance vignettes.  At one point she brought us into a low ceilinged room whose only light came from the blue flame of a gas heater.  The room was covered in dried leaves, which scratched and crunched and filled the room with a strong, earthy, autumnal smell.  It was both haunting and comforting as we stared into the blue-flamed darkness, and I felt very aware of the singularity of the moment.

Budapest in autumn glows.  I happened to hit a week that was still somewhat warm, so when I visited the famed Gellert thermal baths, I was still able to swim in one of the outdoor pools.  It felt a little surreal to be in a pool with leaves falling and autumn clearly in full swing.  Another meaningful experience was visiting the Kerepesi Cemetary near the main train station.  It’s a bit off the beaten path, but an ideal (and free!) place to get away from the city’s bustle.  Some of Hungary’s notable citizens are buried there, and walking around the many elaborate tombs and monuments was like visiting a sculpture garden.

Budapest has many festivals throughout the year, but the Budapest Autumn Festival captures the city at a particularly beautiful time.

A parting image:  Michael Jackson, immortalized in a life-size marzipan sculpture at the Szabo Marzipan Museum in Szentendre, not far from Budapest.

Barcelona, Spain
29-31 October, 2010
Abi Sebaly

While Laurie and other members of the DDF crew traveled to different corners of the world, I was given the opportunity to visit Barcelona to view The Room, an evening-length work by choreographer Thomas Noone.  My trip was graciously supported by both DDF and the Institut Ramon Llull.  The performance was held at the Teatro Mercat de les Flors, a theatre that is part of an impressive arts complex in the leafy Sants-Montjuïc neighbhorhood of the city.  The set design for The Room resembled a cell, or a raw holding space.  The floor was covered wall to wall with gray foam squares, which absorbed the dancers’ sock-footed steps.  This padding enabled the dancers to hurl themselves around with great abandon, yet it was as if someone had uncannily hit the mute button on the sounds of their bodies. Noone worked with a talented cast of dancers, and the piece was very engaging to watch.

Aside from seeing the performance, I did a fast paced museum blitz,  including the Fundació Joan Miro, where Swiss artist Pipilotti Risti had a temporary exhibition, Friendly Game-Electronic Feelings.  The exhibition allowed visitors to meander through different rooms and lay on floor cushions to observe ceiling and wall video projections (floor cushions seemed to be a recurring theme this trip!).  I also did a quick spin through Museu d’art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) and took the train out to the Salvador Dalí Museum in Figueres.

Aside from the performance, some of my favorite moments were spent in quieter parts of the city, walking in the Jardins de Laribal and in the surrounding hills.  I watched little kids playing among olives that had just fallen from olive trees (wow, they really grow on trees and not in jars!) and passed through rows of lemon and orange trees.  After hiking around on some of the trails of the Tibidabo Mountain, I got an impressive view of the city, and the shining Mediterranean beyond.

Although the city is hard to cover in such a brief time, I am grateful to DDF and Thomas Noone for giving me an introduction.

ICE HOT: Nordic Dance Platform
Stockholm, Sweden
December 1-4, 2010
DDF Travellers: Abigail Sebaly and Tiina Ylonen

DDF was recently out in double force at the Nordic Dance  Platform, Ice Hot, a joint initiative coordinated by dance entities from Sweden, Finland, and Norway.  Both Tiina Ylonen and I (Abigail Sebaly) layered up for the bite of the Swedish winter and headed to Stockholm for 4 full days of performances and events.  When our plane arrived and we stepped on to Ryanair’s red carpet (aka the tarmac), the air was sharp and clean, and the snow underfoot was so cold that it squeaked.  Here I felt the environment snapping its fingers, imparting an alertness that would be carried over into the buzz of the platform’s events.

The platform kicked off at Dansens Hus, with a 3-hour performance curated by Charlotte Engelkes.  Engelkes invited a combination of over 40 notable dance, sound, and visual artists to realize a piece that morphed from pure movement to spoken word to people manipulating amplified Sleeping Beauty-style spinning wheels, and a thousand other tableaus.  It was a rare experience to see artists like Tom Caley (a former Merce Cunningham dancer, now co-founder of Scentrifug with Petter Jacobsson), Julie Atlas Muz (New York-based performance artist), and members of Sasha Waltz & Guests, among many others, all sharing the same stage!  It was miracle enough that everyone could coordinate their schedules, let alone create a performance together.

Shifting venues, on Stockholm’s island of Skeppsholmen, we climbed up a snowy path to the Moderna Dansteatern, where Finnish choreographer Sanna Myllylahti presented Closer to Heaven, a piece for 5 strong women who continually ran toward, and retreated from, the audience members in the theatre’s expansive space.

Back in the center of town, at the Stockholm Stadsteater, Oded Graf and Yossi Berg’s Animal Lost wove a dialogue of wry idiosyncratic statements like, “I am a Danish dentist. I earn a lot of money and I make a lot of mistakes” alongside inventive, gestural movements.  Humour and darkness were inextricable from each other as the dancers slipped animal masks on and off.  In Reich + Szyber’s Unknown Pleasures, one dancer offered a hilarious, scrupulously detailed narration of several Michael Jackson videos, complete with the moonwalk, that iconic diamond glove, slouch socks and loafers, and high pitched “Ow!” In Philippe Blanchard’s How About You?, a pair of strikingly similar brothers performed an intriguing piece which reflected two close bodies operating in separate but parallel worlds.

Each time we exited the theatre, we were plunged back into Stockholm’s pre-Christmas frenzy.  Christmas markets were in full swing all over the city (selling mulled wine, Swedish gingersnaps called pepparkakor, all manner of candies, hot waffles, Santas made with sheep’s wool beards, straw reindeer, etc).  Even though the sun set at an improbably early 3pm, many windows and entrances were lit with small lights and candles.

The Ice Hot platform was very well organized and it was exciting to see that the Nordic dance scene, even in the depths of winter, is far from in hibernation.   Sweden, I will be back!

Internationale Tanzmesse
Düsseldorf, Germany
August 25-28

Since Laurie is away in New York, I dusted off my Deutsch and early one morning headed to Düsseldorf for Tanzmesse. It’s a biennial dance trade fair – a big market place where choreographers, agents, presenters, venues, festivals and other interested folk get together to talk, network and watch lots of dance. Such an eye opener to meet so many more people working in dance – and to get a feel for the kind of dance being created in Europe and further afield! The Irish were well represented too, with five companies (including Rex Levitates, CoisCéim, IMDT, Jean Butler and Legitimate Bodies) featured in the showcases over the four days of the festival. The Culture Ireland booth, where ‘Team Ireland’ spent lots of time meeting people, was right inside the door of the fair hall – they couldn’t miss us!

Over the course of four days I had the chance to catch up with several of the international guests who attended DDF in 2009 and 2010, and was introduced to lots of work by artists I didn’t know before.  The performances opened with a repertory show by Philadanco, who celebrate their 40th anniversary this year. Presenting a mixed programme of jazz, funk and modern ballet, this was a fun show – with Jawole Willa Jo Zollar’s By the way of Funk being a definite highlight. I followed this with a complete atmospheric change with Cie. Didier Théron’s Hara Kiri, which presented a relentless chorus of movement, dark and often disturbing in its imagery, but powerful in its execution.

The next three days passed in a flurry of introductions, meetings and shows. I caught a studio showing of Tim Rushton’s work for Danish Dance Theatre, followed by a double bill of French companies, A Contre Poil du Sens – whose work Bonnes Nouvelles started out with childish humour, but finished with some beautiful images of the dancers’ bodies projected onto each other – and Compagnie Sylvain Groud’s duet L’Oubli, which explored ideas of the fear of and the need to forget.  Sol Picó gave a riotous performance as a self-styled front woman of a rock band. Late on Thursday night, the music of Leonard Cohen was played live for Granhøj Dans’ homage to the Canadian poet and singer. Dance me to the End on/off Love, styled as a  dance-concert, was humorous, touching and understated.

Brian Brooks’ work Motor was set inside a tunnel of pale blue cables, focusing our attention on the driving energy of his dancers. Live music was also integrated into compagnia zappalà danza’s Instrument 1, in which the Jew’s harp, a typical Sicilian instrument, accompanied seven male dancers who competed and flirted with each other in a virtuosic investigation of Sicilian habits and gestures. Featuring another all-male cast, Compagnie Thor brought nine dancers of African origin to the stage for To the Ones I Love.

A trip to Krefeld on Saturday afternoon was worthwhile to catch Thomas Noone’s work Bound, a succinct and highly physical piece which deftly explored the apparent paradox presented by the title. I was glad also to watch Caroline Simon’s work Stück, which I missed at Dublin Fringe Festival in 2009. It’s both clever and hilarious and makes well observed comments on real-life and stage-life. Back at Tanzhaus NRW, after another tasty dinner (finding time to eat was the toughest challenge of Tanzmesse!), there was one last triple bill, the highlight of which was also the shortest piece – Shang Chi Move’s Dialogue II – which in only eight minutes created beautiful, fluid images that were resonant and fresh.

It was up to us to do the dancing after that…the wrap-party DJs managed to get everyone (and I mean everyone!) onto the dance floor. For a while, before beer and tiredness thinned the crowd, it was a show in itself!

CORK, CLONMEL & GALWAY
JUNE – JULY 2010

Three Irish festivals laudably included choreographers well worth the trip through the country this summer.  At Cork Midsummer Festival, Jérome Bêl’s 2001 work, The Show Must Go On, provoked, irritated and delighted (different) audience members.  Built on a simple conceit of illustrating up to 20 iconic songs from films (Hair and Titanic) and pop songs by artists from the Beatles to Edith Piaf from Roberta Flack to the Police, the 20 performers stand and watch the audience (I’ll Be Watching You), die (Killing Me Softly), go through a trap door in the stage (Yellow Submarine) or exit the stage as the audience is bathed in pink light (La Vie en Rose).  It’s obvious, but it’s also incredibly smart.  Once you catch on, you can relax and take note of what the different performers bring to each song.  Some members of the cast are highly trained ballet dancers, others are not dancers at all, yet each is a joy to watch.  By opening with 8 minutes of an empty stage (Tonight and Let the Sun Shine In), the piece is a bit of a tease in terms of breaking “the lights go down, now we must be silent and respectful” audience-performer relationship.  On opening night, the Cork audience took full advantage of this leeway: they went out to the bar for more drinks, sang along to Imagine and Sounds of Silence, and a number of them left the theatre.  In the post-performance discussion (which I moderated), Jérome spoke of different reactions in various locations, including the audience climbing onstage to join the cast in Paris.  He noted, however, that the Irish audience sang more than any other he’d yet experienced.

While in Cork, I stopped in to the Lewis Glucksman Gallery to see Mel Mercier’s sound installation, From the Sources.   Commemorating the Fleischmann centenary, the John Cage-inspired take on traditional music is on until 24 October.  Don’t miss it if you’re in Cork!

The Clonmel Junction Festival commissioned and premiered a new work by Iseli-Chiodi entitled MYS2 (Me Seeing You Too), an extension of the themes in >Me Seeing You<. that was presented as part of Re-Presenting Ireland at DDF 2010.  Set up in a large open space, with hanging white fabric on which a forest was projected, the piece opened with Iseli dashing through, a kind of hide and seek with the audience.  After these fabric swaths were taken down, interviews with people of diverse backgrounds were projected on screens of various sizes and the audience was invited to come onstage to have various viewpoints on the videos and the dancers who inhabited different parts of the stage.  A pre-show work created with three young performers in a five-day workshop took place in the lobby which also serves as a café and arts centre.  This Festival has a real sense of community inclusion and involvement.

Israeli-born, British-based choreographer Hofesh Shechter brought his most recent work, Political Mother, to the Galway Arts Festival, which was a co-producer of the piece.  Shechter, who was trained in music as well as dance, composed the score for this piece which comprised four guitarists and four drummers on raised stages amidst smoky lighting.  Intricate shuddering movements by a cast of ten belied an underlying tension and implied aggression was interspersed with moments of tenderness.  Shechter has received significant attention and support in the U.K and it was great to see him in Ireland.  Winner of the Critic’s Circle National Dance Award for Best Choreography (modern) in 2008, his work has been touring widely in the U.K., Europe and Asia.

What a pleasure it was to see such excellent dance performances without getting on a plane!

MONTPELLIER DANSE (FR)
JUNE 20-30, 2010

PARC DE LA VILLETTE, PARIS
JULY 1, 2010

Montpellier Danse celebrated its 30th anniversary this year with an expanded three-week festival that featured many artists who had been a part of its history.  Most of these artists were presented on the festival’s many stages but others were represented by drawings (Trisha Brown), installations (William Forsythe), or via videos and a tribute (the late Dominique Bagouet).  Founding director Jean-Paul Montanari noted, in an interview in the festival brochure, that this edition marks the end of a ten-year cycle.  I’m curious to see what’s in store for the 31st edition!

The Festival opened with the revival of Merce Cunningham’s Roaratorio, a piece created in 1983 to John Cage’s score, Roaratorio, an Irish Circus on Finnegan’s Wake.  Unfortunately, summer had not quite arrived in Montpellier that first weekend of the Festival and two performances — in the newly re-opened outdoor theatre, the Agora — had to be cancelled due to rain and cold (it was a very atypical 16° at curtain time on the Sunday night).  Fortunately company Executive Director Trevor Carlson found me with 15’ to spare to get to an added 5pm performance.  It was really quite beautiful in daylight and the dancers looked sun-drenched and happy.  The performance was followed by a solemn scattering of Merce’s ashes in the courtyard of the Festival’s building (see photo – you’ll recognise the cours it if you saw Raimund Hoghe’s film Cartes Postales last fall; you may also recognise DDF’s 2009 intern, Jean-François).   Watch this space for more news on Roaratorio…………

A sidebar here on Agora, international city of dance.  The former convent of the Ursulines, built in the 17th century, is now shared by the National Choreographic Centre in Montpellier (artistic director, Mathilde Monnier) and Montpellier Danse.  The Choreographic Centre opened Studio Bagouet, a rehearsal and performance space, in 1997.  Final construction took place over the past year to refurbish the outdoor theatre and open two rehearsal studios, a meeting hall and, coming soon, artist housing in the Festival’s quarters.  This structure attests to the place that dance holds within the greater Montpellier region.

Kader Attou is one of the new Artistic Directors of another of France’s 19 National Choreographic Centres – he was selected for La Rochelle in 2008.  Along with Mourad Merzouki and Cie Käfig at the National Choreographic Centre in Créteil, Attou represents the new generation of choreographers who are working from a foundation of hip-hop and street dance.  (Merzouki and Attou were co-founders of the pioneering 1980s company Accrorap).  Attou’s new work, Symfonia piesni załosnych, to Gorecki’s eponymous score, mixes hip-hop with contemporary dance and incorporates a Bharata Natyam dancer whose vocabulary is echoed by the other women in the cast. Performed in a high school gymnasium with the audience at the two ends of the space, the piece was complex and moving.

A few days after the Cunningham Company had departed (and with the evening about 10° warmer), Akram Khan performed Gnosis at l’Agora.  The programme included beautiful Kathak solos created by himself and his mentor as well as a new duet with the astonishing Japanese dancer (and taiko drummer) Yoshie Sunahata.  In addition to the Japanese percussion, the Indian tabla and sarod, a western cello added to the unusual but harmonious instrumentation.

Rosas danst Rosas, the 1985 work by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, the piece after which she named her company, rocked my world when I saw it at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1986.  The company has revived it and it is every bit as powerful in its reincarnation.  The cast in Montpellier included De Keersmaeker with three young dancers.  She is such an incredible presence – she managed to leave an upstage formation, walk to an audience member in the front row to stop him from taking photos, and return to the upstage line, re-commencing the dance with nary a missed beat. The score by Thierry De Mey and Peter Vermeersch is relentless; their group’s name, Maximalist, was a kind of irreverent poke at all the minimalism of the time.

Raimund Hoghe’s new work, Si je meurs laissez le balcon ouvert (When I die, leave the balcony open) was initially commissioned by Montpellier Danse as an homage to Bagouet but the piece grew in scope and ultimately reflects Hoghe’s personal history with the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 90s (as well as that of our own).  DDF audiences will not be surprised to hear that the piece runs 3 ½ hours; but, for those who can relax into its pacing, it was definitely not too long.  Hoghe is joined by seven commanding dancers (including Lorenzo de Brabandere and Emmanuel Eggermont who were with him in Dublin) and an actor.  The work is imbued with loss, even sentimentality, yet there are some very funny vignettes in the mix and it is never maudlin.

Two young choreographers who have recently attracted significant attention were given the opportunity to show three of their works.  Cecilia Bengolea, originally from Argentina, and François Chaignaud push the edges of decorum in their works (for example, Paquerette is called a project for four performers – two artists and two dildos) but they have clearly done their homework.  Each dance reflects the integrity of their research into dance history as well as their 21st century take on it.

Other artists/companies I was able to see included Alain Buffard, Régine Chopinot, Germana Civera, Mathilde Monnier, Jiři Kylián/Nerderlands Dans Theater, Ohad Naharin/Batsheva Dance Company, Anne-Marie Porras & Salia Sanou, Fabrice Ramalingom, and Didier Théron but you have to buy me a glass of wine if you want to hear about everything!

In my 2009 report, I vowed to stay longer in 2010 – and I did!  Thanks to homelink.org, I was able to find a great apartment in the centre of Montpellier. Special thanks to Annie Sassi for exchanging apartments with me…. now that’s a kind of sponsorship that really stretches the travel budget!

*   *   *   *   *   *   *

En route back to Dublin, I stopped in Paris to see the new work by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (whose Apocrifu was seen at the Abbey as part of DDF 2009) and Damien Jalet with visual design by Antony Gormley.  Entitled Babel (words), the piece continues Cherkaoui’s investigation into the power of words, extending that to the power of language (e.g., the dominance of English).  With text in the 13 cast members’ languages, the work is cacophonous, but not chaotic. On the 1st of July, the thermometer hit 35° in Paris; that first chilly night in Montpellier seemed long ago and far away.

FESTIVAL TRANSAMÉRIQUES, MONTRÉAL
JUNE 9-11, 2010

Montréal is such a beautiful city, especially in late May/early June when the lilacs bloom throughout. It’s the perfect time for a festival and Festival Transamériques, now an annual event that incorporates both dance and theatre, is perfectly scheduled. Unfortunately, I only had two days there this year but they were jammed with performances, meetings and several informal showings.

In the mid-80’s, Louise Lecavalier was the human dynamo of LaLaLa Human Steps, Édouard Lock’s company. While Édouard laconically played guitar, Louise’s endless barrel turns at mega-speed took your breath away. Over the past few years, she has come back to performing, commissioning works by Benoit Lachambre and Tedd Robinson, among others. At this year’s FTA, she performed Children + a Few Minutes of Lock. She was absolutely stunning. At 52, and having had a hip replacement, she has somehow recovered her 25-year old body. Her performance with Patrick Lamothe in Nigel Charnock’s aerobically challenging Children was amazing and it was fantastic to see her throwing out those barrel turns again – even in the 13’ of Lock’s work that was performed with Elijah Brown. On the main programme, I was also able to see Tammy Forsythe and the Portuguese artist Tania Caravalho, who is part of the Lisbon-based collaborative, Bomba Suicida. Both these artists are very conscious of the visual look of their work, though in quite different ways.

As part of Off-FTA Frédérick Gravel, an intriguing young voice who puts an equal emphasis on the music (live) as on the dance, showed Gravel Works. Dominique Porte showed a very new work in progress, in which she is exploring the physicality of kinetic memory. A beautiful dancer with a long performance history, this piece holds promise. I also saw a showing of Vertiges by Stéphanie Decourteille, a very young artist who incorporates interesting aerial work.

Being in Montréal also provided a great opportunity to catch up with some colleagues. I met with Kathy Casey, Artistic Director of Montréal Danse, and heard about some new directions the company is taking; Bernard Lagacé, General Manager of BJM Danse talked about their broad repertory and touring program; and Laurence Wegscheider of Compagnie Flak provided some news on how José’s new solo is shaping up (watch this space!).

The Québec Government Office in London has been very generous in their support of DDF staff travel to see Québec dance artists over the past year. We will miss Colin Hicks, Director of Cultural Services, who is moving onto independent ventures and wish him all the best.

VENICE BIENNALE
MAY 29-JUNE 1, 2010

Venice is a dream world.  A movie set.  Who can imagine such a city into existence?  Well, certainly the hordes of tourists who rival Grafton Street on the Saturday before Christmas….

Piazza San Marco

With great thanks to the Québec Government Office, London and the invitation of George Skalkogiannis of Daniel Léveillé Danse, I spent a fairly glorious three days in Venice.  Coming just a week after the finale of DDF 2010, it was a welcome respite.  The three works of Daniel Léveillé’s trilogy – Amour, Acide et Noix (seen at DDF 2009), La Pudeur des Icebergs, and La Crépusule des Océans — looked beautiful in Teatro Tese in the Arsenale, a brick-walled former military complex.  Having seen these works over a span of some seven years, it was quite informative to see the three within such a brief time frame.  The Biennale had a Québec focus and I was also happy to see Marie Chouinard’s group work, Le Nombre d’Or, in which there was an intriguing use of masks.  Her solo,  Gloires du Matin,  was stunningly performed by Chouinard herself at 9am in the very intimate setting of a studio in La Fenice.  In addition to these five works by Québec artists, I also saw Crystal Pite’s company, Kidd Pivot (from Vancouver), in Dark Matters.  The first act of this piece had a haunting Pinocchio-like puppet and a crashing set.  José Navas was also at the Biennale, performing Miniatures, one of the highlights of DDF 2009, but I unfortunately couldn’t get there as the timing and geography didn’t work.

An added bonus was meeting Bridget Webster (former CoisCéim manager) for lunch.  She is currently living in Padova outside of Venice with her husband and two children (who look adorable in their photos).  It was really a treat to dine with someone who knows someone who knows the restaurant owner.  Fabulous fish!

George, Daniel and company at dinner.

On her way back to London, Mary Kate Connolly jots down some notes on her snapshot of DDF 2010…

I’m on the bus from Dublin airport, not fifty yards away from the terminal when it starts. A kaleidoscope of images that are ever familiar, but now animated unsettlingly as signifiers; symbols and evaluations of my home where at the moment, I don’t live. And so the airport roundabout is not a roundabout, but the setting for a sculpture which my uncle designed some years ago. Street corners offer up not a blurry landscape of dear old dirty Dublin, but epic spaces which have hosted a first drink, a missed opportunity, a chance meeting. There is an inherent valuation system at work as I watch this cartoon: has the city changed? Is it better or worse? Does it comply with my now heavily romanticised notion of what Home is? There is ever-present, the capacity for disappointment in this reunion…like a lover whose late arrival and scruffy attire fails to measure up to the heart-fluttering and anticipation of the girl who has waited expectantly for him.

Progress and change it must be said, I view with certain discomfort; it points to a kind of slippage, a sense of time passing – am I not allowed just to preserve it all? Seal it tight in a jar, static and frozen until I come home. Returning this time however for a short sojourn at the Dublin Dance festival, change, shifts, and vibrancy were the order of the day…and all in a good way. The dynamism of the festival was palpable, with the city playing host to an eclectic selection of Irish and international artists, all showcasing varied works, and chatting over Sheridan’s cheese platters.

The festival’s themes were ones which engaged me from the outset. Originally heralding from a largely balletic background, I find myself increasingly drawn to performances like that of Raimund Hoghe’s or Carlotta Sagna’s in which the charisma, texture and depth of the work stems not from flashy dance technique or youthful physical perfection per se, but from the richness of witnessing somebody inhabit a performance space, and infuse it with their presence. For me, Dublin Dance festival didn’t emblazon in lights that there are older/different bodies on stage. In fact it achieved something more subtle, in that I never actually noted the age or physicality of a performer as being particularly remarkable or different within the festival context. It seemed perfectly natural to watch the gentle poise of Madge Bolger performing in Swimming with my Mother, and giggle at the ironic bodily journey of Silvia Gribaudi in A CORPO LIBERO. Likewise works like GIMP by Heidi Latsky redefine the parameters of dance, simply by existing, and doing. To me this is not a case of people overcoming something to perform, or adapting dance to their physicality or age – rather they just expand and innovate the form in new directions, and offer new possibilities.

In addition to the quiet rupture of sometimes prevalent bodily norms in performance, I found the works in the festival provided some thought-provoking material in terms of considering signification in dance, and the inherently evocative nature of the artform. ‘Signification in dance’, according to choreographer Tere O’ Connor ‘is a tower that’s constantly falling down’ (1).  In his quest for abstraction, his choreography seeks out an a-symbolic journey, in which associations are formed, but only fleetingly. Sentiments echoed in codified whispers and suggestions. Personally, I find the potential for evocation which operates on an abstract level, a particularly eloquent capability of dance. In performances where abstraction and blurring are at work, there is a generosity afforded for the viewer to associate and disassociate as they choose. The heady strains of Peggy Lee swirling around a minimalist tableau in Young People, Old Voices communicate an emotion that is piercing due precisely to a sense of remove. Similarly the disjointed and unsettling score of DAY, composed by James Baker, pursued a largely oblique journey save for a few nuggets of faintly recognisable sounds or harmonious passages which all of a sudden tinged the choreography in a momentarily different hue – fresh and arresting due to their scarcity.

Experiencing the festival as I was, with ‘visitor goggles’ on, I was struck by the thought-provoking flavour of the 2010 programming, and testament to this were the good natured arguments and opposing viewpoints which the selection of works inspired. After all, isn’t that dance at its best? Provoking, inciting and seducing, not with didactic or ostentatious display, but through the multiple, intriguing possibilities of the human body.

Mary Kate is a freelance movement practitioner and writer on dance and performance, currently based in London. She holds a lecturing and research post at the Laban conservatoire of Contemporary Dance.

1. O’Connor speaking at the Many Bodies Of Contemporary Dance Symposium.

Caroline ‘Complimentary’ Williams – Hell has a special place set aside for the likes of you.

It really isn’t fair. You can’t just wander around dispensing one-way tickets to crapulency when you know – you know – that some of us lack the self-control to say no. And it’s the height of recklessness to do so after we’d gotten all hyped up by the extraordinary Noche Flamenca. I mean, how’s a person so induced to inebriety not supposed to offer his very own tipsy pastiche of the bracing heel work, severe poses and percussive drama just enjoyed?

To understand exactly what I mean, please watch that youtube clip of Soledad Barrio et al here.

Done? Good. Now imagine all that performed by a distinctly rhythmless Irish person. In a pair of soft-soled shoes. On the quays. And no matter how vivid your imagination, I guarantee the reality was ten times as tragic. Seriously, I had to call the guards on him, it was that bad.

Yes, Ms Williams, by your willful malfeasance you have earned yourself a sorry end. A sorry end indeed.

I only wish we could do it all over again. Oh well. Here’s to next year.

¡Olé!

Sometimes a night just ends on a weird note.

And no, I’m not talking about the ‘weird’ that was that night in college when friendship blurred into something..uhm…else. Or the ‘weird’ where an amazing date becomes – for no apparent reason whatsoever – the greatest bail-out since 2008.

No, when I say weird, I mean weird. Uncanny. Preternatural. Spooksville. I mean nights like last night, which ended with myself, Deirdre Mulrooney and Una Kavanagh (actor, artist and nominee for the Fishamble New Writing Award for Fringe 09′s Black Bessie) swapping stories of psychic hotlines, seers on South William Street, lupine noms de plume and a monied New Ager’s demented character assassination plot against Marian Finucane. I know. Weird, right?

In our defence, we had just watched Double Track which – with bodies phasing in and out of sight, and sounds not quite arriving aright – tends to conjure with the eerie. As you watch, notions of limbo, suspension, and deferment easily play across your consciousness. The movements, gestures and stances of the performers are large, assured, circling; their sweeping quality even at times hinting at social or Asian dance form. This grounded deftness is comforting, balancing as it does the ethereal nature each vanishing lends the piece. And Louis Andriessen’s composition complements and magnifies the aura of tantalization and disquiet that runs throughout.

A few quibbles: Beckett’s writings can be fiendishly difficult to do justice to in performance; I’m afraid Double Track confirms this. Indeed, I almost feel it’s not a little unfair to ask dance artists to master Beckett alongside whatever choreography there is. And much as I admire Crash Ensemble, having them play Andriessen’s score before the show was a mistake; it stymied the natural flow of the evening and, for me, blunted the aural potency of this work.

But it’s worth seeing, particularly for the technical inventiveness that gives this production the unique quality of being both contemplative and spectacular. Sounds right? Then get your ticket here.

Okay, that’s pretty much it. Last night, people. Let’s make it a…well, perhaps not a weird but an extraordinary one…

Sometimes it’s all a little too much. The world overwhelms your efforts to make sense of it.

And the kicker is, you never see it coming. Take last night. I’d pulled into the Garage Bar to fill the tank before spinning over to Project to catch Ad Vitam. And I’d only just parked myself when I totally got roached. Now, I’d never reproach anyone for a difference of opinion – especially this particular individual. I mean, I respect her approach. Deeply respect, in fact. But, dammit, that’s part of the problem, because apparently we define ‘deep’ completely differently. And as I’m trying to puzzle out how the, er, lingo she advises could get us down this road in a revolutionary manner – whilst ignoring a volunteered scurrilous jest of coppers with feelings – I turn to find I’m adjoined by two men, one of ACTION, the other an enfant terrible with a year-old creed of fifty scantily clad men in blonde wigs, clambering athwart an audience.

And then the house lights went down.

Truth is, of course, whatever curveball life throws our way, most of us are up to it. Sure, we might strike out – but at least we know the rules, and get to play the odds as we wish. But what about those who don’t?

Carlotta Sagna’s Ad Vitam,  probing as it does the borders of normality and pathology, is a work that brings into stark relief the isolation and disjunction suffered by those for whom life is not easy. Those who don’t fit; who will never find the right pitch.

A monologue of heart-rending honesty complements a restricted, repetitive movement language that reflects the compulsiveness, stereotypy and self-directed violence that can afflict those with impaired social interaction and communication skills. If you know, love and care for anyone so afflicted, there are moments of great authenticity here, handled with respect and sensitivity. If you don’t, then I can only commend this work to you in the strongest terms possible. You can still get a ticket here.

Tonight – the penultimate night of the festival – I’m off to see  Double Track. God, it’s hard to believe we’re almost done. Let’s make the most of it…

But back on track.

The Many Bodies of Contemporary Dance symposium kicked my day off a little earlier than usual, as panel members Raimund Hoghe, Tere O’Connor, and Caroline Bowditch, along with John Scott and Cindy Cummings (a last minute stand-in for fellow Aosdana member David Bolger), undertook to stimulate new debate and offer fresh perspectives on the many bodies and people involved in dance.

Enthusiastically stewarded by Deirdre Mulrooney, the afternoon saw a shift from panel-led discussion towards more of a round table format, with contributions from Mary Kate Connolly, Jenny Roche, Tara Brandel, Megan Kennedy, and Jeffrey Gormly. The shared commitment to, and passionate belief in dance and its future was as apparent as it was encouraging. And yet, as the afternoon progressed, I couldn’t help feeling that many of the comments made were in essence tangential to one another. As if the point of a remark was ignored, except insofar as it might serve as a point from which to launch another – at times quite divergent – trajectory of thought.

Sure, all this made for a delightfully convivial atmosphere, where harmony and consensus reigned supreme. But I did wonder what might have transpired had we dared appoint the verbally dextrous and incisive Tere O’Connor to play free-wheeling devil’s advocate. Perhaps it would have been a schismatic calamity. But who knows? Perhaps not. Perhaps the resultant exchange would have been as fresh and immediate as DAY, performed by Jean Butler.

Now, I’m aware my response is strongly coloured by other performances of Butler’s I’ve seen over the last few years. She’s struck me as an individual willing to confront head-on the challenge her celebrated status presented her as an artist. She has not shirked this task; and the resultant work has impressed. But it always seemed that some strange inflection of uncertainty was there; a pernicious doubt within that – almost imperceptibly – would check, query or impede every impulse.

Watching Butler’s performance last night though, I felt none of that. Instead, I found that Tere O’Connor has not only choreographed a work that instantiates the vivid immediacy of the ever living now. He – or rather, his work process – has somehow exorcised a spectre and helped a dancer find her way back to herself.

(Of course, seeing as the programme notes say this work ‘questions how much we can really know someone and if our projections constitute our knowing more than the actual truth’, you really should up and find your own projections. Begin your quest by booking here.)

Finding your way back to yourself could also apply to two other works: Swimming with my Mother and  A CORPO LIBERO (FREE STYLE). Bolger’s work-in-progress (featuring both the choreographer and his mother, Madge) is sweet-natured, seeming almost a hybrid of biography, memoir and social history.

As for Silvia Gribaudi’s A CORPO LIBERO…? Well, what can I write that could possibly do it justice? It’s a manifesto for emancipation. It’s beautifully, minutely-observed. It’s uplifting, charming, intoxicating and elevating. And it unabashedly celebrates humanity. And to be completely honest, I don’t think in the entire festival I’ve seen a more beautiful human being on-stage.

What more’s left to say? Get your tickets here.

Wait..what’s that? Got more left to say? Well then, hit the Many Bodies forum here.

“Yeah…I really like that it’s boring.”

It was the interval of Young People, Old Voices and I had just asked a friend what she thought. Now, at times she can be a little deadpan in her delivery, so I turned to look directly at her, to gauge just how serious she was.

Oh. She was serious. Perfectly serious. Huh.

Okay, I admit – when she said it, I was utterly incredulous. I mean, who on earth likes anything boring? But the more I think about it, the more I feel her response expresses a perennial truth about audiences. And that truth is, almost every single person who has bought a ticket, has bought into ‘it’ – the journey, the concept, the conceit: the why of the work. On some level, and to some extent, whether conscious or no, everyone in that auditorium wants it to succeed. We want to get it. We want the performer – or the choreographer, or playwright, or director, or artist – to  triumph, magnificently. We want the win-win. And as a result, we will surrender ourselves to almost any demand an artist makes of us.

Well, for a time at least. For as we all know, our surrender is only ever conditional.

Sometimes its revocation is abrupt, with people tramping out mid-performance, as happened last night. And disruptive too, like the one lady who offered a mocking curtsy to the performers as she left. (I know…real classy, right?)

Naturally, I’d prefer if a little self-control had been exercised and they’d all slipped away quietly during the interval. But their decision to leave is one I understand and sympathise with, to a certain extent. Because this show was boring.

Now don’t get me wrong – I’m well aware of how useful boredom can be. Just like any other intense psychic state – such as desire, confusion, or fear – boredom can be elicited and utilised to make individuals highly suggestible and receptive to direction and communication. That is, if it’s used effectively and knowingly. And I’m not at all sure its elicitation in Young People, Old Voices qualifies in either respect.

In what the programme notes describe as an ‘increasingly poignant’ contrast between Raimund Hoghe and 12 young cast members, an ‘accumulation’ of ‘ritualized movement sequences’,  juxtaposed with the voices of singers like Etta James and Billie Holiday, is punctuated by Hoghe’s interventions. Indeed, were there a ritualized quality to detect, you might even characterize his role as that of psychopomp.

However, though intended to convey the boisterousness and playfulness of youth, the movement tasks entrusted to these young men and women at best seem static and banal, at worst, condescending and tedious. The progression from sequence to sequence is – particularly at the beginning – ponderous to an extreme. Furthermore, impassivity of expression does not suffice – quite simply, the execution of these tasks lacks the precision and presence that might impart to them a truly ritualistic nature.

In contrast to this are the duets Hoghe and Lorenzo De Brabandere share. At those moments, the theatre is filled with an almost tangible force of presence. Between them there exists…well, to call it a love affair is perhaps to go too far. But their locked gaze possesses a quality of fascination and enthrallment that simply captivates. It’s then, in those all too rare instances, that this work comes anywhere close to drawing a ‘poignant contrast’ between youth and age.

Clearly, I was disappointed…all the more so, I suspect, for having enjoyed last year’s screening of Carte Postales as much as I did. But of course, your impression might contrast starkly, so please – feel free to book here.

You work hard. You go to every last show they can possibly send you to. You diligently read all the programme notes. You spend time, lots of time – hours, in fact – working on your blog posts. And in between, you even harass your agent to line up more auditions. So yeah, you work hard. In fact, you know you work hard.

Or that’s what you think you know.

And then a damned wunderkind like Tom Creed crosses your path. And despite having a bazillion shows to direct, rehearsals to lead, and meetings to attend, he’s here for the show. That’s right. And not only that, but he’s sociable and approachable too. Goddamn it. I should just quit now. Maybe hang with Dante and Randal.

But I hang on. And I learn that, even for a slacker, persistence brings its own rewards.

Because in Basso Ostinato Italian choreographer Caterina Sagna has delivered an audacious, gratifying and incisive work, one unafraid to grub around in the grimy settlings of human existence.

Its title is a musical term, ostinato being a succession of equal sounds; the basso ostinato, a bassline repeated over and over again, while other parts proceed with variation. And the form and progression of the piece certainly makes this an accurate descriptor.

Two men sit at a table. Behind them, on a television set, a ballet plays. The meal is over; and what remains of the evening is fated to a long unwinding in booze, cigarettes and reminiscences. The half-remembered quotes and anecdotes that score an unraveling life will be punctuated by the accidental mishaps of inebriation, both physical and verbal. A dropped cigarette. An unwise confession.

With a bassline established – repeat, with variation. The television set is wheeled off, its place taken by a third man and movement displaces – yet never fully replaces – the spoken word. Instead, sentences are whittled away by gesture, words dropped with each fall, and the essential basso continuo that physicality imparts to all communication becomes increasingly audible. In their interactions, they compete, compel and reject; enforce and exclude; dominate and fall victim. Scripted responses become vague and confused; bodies lose balance, become frantically avaricious, or are struck with sudden mortality; bone dissolves, flesh crawls itself towards a sea of oblivion and man is reduced to worm or worm-food. And over and over, again and again, all return – or fight to return – to a bottle-laden table, where one might have a sip or a drag of something…anything, even the blackest most noxious of things, just to find distraction. Life seems a sinking into a morass, a mire, a terrible solvent. And each starting over, however forceful, is only ever the continuation of a lingering – sometimes explosive – process of decay. This is one damned existence.

And the title also plays with the ambiguities of language (depending on context basso can mean low, shallow, short, inferior, base and mean, and ostinato, persistent, determined and stubborn) as this is precisely what it all descends to: a stubbornly noisome interest in coarse drunkenness, in scatological humour, in the abasing of beauty and the mockery of meaning…until death – that basso ostinato of bodily life – is finally succumbed to.

It all sounds very grim and grimy. And it is. But don’t let this put you off for a second. This is work that leaves you feeling exhilarated. The three dancers are superb and their talents are deftly taken advantage of by Sagna to ensure her vision is as hilarious as it is harrowing.

So go – get your ticket now. Get it here.

I’m under no particular obligation to take it easy today.

I don’t have Yahweh glaring in my kitchen window, warning me to back away from the Mac. And I’m pretty certain St Paul isn’t going to fire off a blistering epistle of condemnation. That said, I’m going to take a day of rest anyway. Maybe do a little sun worshipping.

But before all that…the shows.

Last night was special. First, because it marked the midpoint in the trajectory of events scheduled for this year’s festival. And second because, to celebrate this, my DDF minders had lined me up three consecutive productions, in two different locations, lasting some four hours. And I loved it.

The evening kicked off in Project with two works by Laïla Diallo, The Wayside and Between the Shingle and the Dune. The latter, a duet performed by both Diallo and Theo Clinkard, was an absorbing examination of relationship. Capturing well the ease and unease that proximity invites, this work evoked both the heedless will to risk, and the unwitting power to harm that makes and breaks all bonds. Diallo’s opening solo, The Wayside, was even more impressive, seeming to trace forth the inner complications, blocks and exhaustions that, however minor, cumulatively make any act of departure, or any attempt to walk away, so difficult.

GIMP started strongly with an aerial performance by Jennifer Bricker and Nate Crawford that was not simply spectacular, but elegant and considered. Alas, that initial exhilaration was not (perhaps could not be) sustained. Indeed, as the show drew to a close, I couldn’t help feeling it had lost a certain coherence – even ambition – and found myself wishing that both audience and performers had been challenged a little more. Nonetheless, the stamina and calibre of performers ensured this was a production that led its audience firmly past awareness of the apparent towards an appreciation of the substantial. Lezlie Frye impressed, as did Lawrence Carter-Long, whose arch yet humorous monologue was something of a highlight.

Finally, Smock Alley was the venue for Secondary Sources, a piece that explores the (often unconscious) influences we glean and garner from others, whether people, places or events. Though at first seeming measured and unobtrusive in its progression, a satisfyingly complex dynamic reveals itself, one possessing an almost mathematical elegance. The strange hemispheric spiraling of chairs in a space, as motion echoes from body to body, and gesture assimilates to limb: all hint at how, out of the constantly reiterated movements of life, a kaleidoscopic or fractal image of resonance and reflection might be conceptualised. The live accompaniment by Ed Rosenberg and Justin Carroll was well-judged and deserving of note.

Personally speaking, this work attests to Liz Roche’s talent as a choreographer: her ability to engage with and distill the conceptual into the corporeal, and use her chosen idiom of dance in a manner that enriches both domains of inquiry.

That’s it guys. We’re half-way there. If you’ve missed anything, you’ve already missed too much….so go catch up here.

Going back to an old workplace is like visiting your hometown on a bank holiday. I mean, it takes a special occasion to get you back in the first place, which means it’s not quite an ordinary day in the life. And yet…just being present is somehow enough. Enough to let the once ordinary shine through: Everything you liked about the place. All you disliked. Everything new there. And everything now gone. It’s amazing how old haunts haunt us.

What that means to someone like me, someone lucky enough to have worked in DanceHouse, is that every performance (or sharing, or presentation) becomes a weird kind of homecoming dance. Which I guess makes yesterday’s Re-Presenting Ireland a monster parade, tailgate and pep-rally all rolled into one…

Over the course of Friday afternoon, in the environs of the Joanna Banks Studio, a selection of work by dance artists in Ireland was presented, some more complete than others. Curiously, to this viewer, the works of these mixed bills seemed – when considered together – to form an unusual symmetry.

Though differing in tone and ultimate effect, Elena Giannotti (The Crow) and Angie Smalis (The Lightly Fragranced Solo) both proffered compositions of appressed phrasing, where a compact alternation of motion, tempo and direction suggested the natural, the autonomic, and any number of complex processes not subject to volition.

Arguably, a kinship in language and theme could be traced between Iseli-Chiodi Dance Company’s >Me Seeing You< and Dance Theatre of Ireland’s Handle With Care, one that goes deeper than the use of duet. Still in the initial stages of development, DTI’s piece concerning love, proximity to another, and transformation, guilelessly conformed to the notes accompanying it. By contrast, though displaying the strengths of its performers, >Me Seeing You< didn’t quite succeed in its stated creative ambitions, at least by my estimation. It did, however, underline the difficulties of effectively incorporating multimedia elements into live performance.

Finally, we have Liv O’Donoghue’s This Woman I Met and Irish Modern Dance Theatre’s ACTIONS, both of which impressed greatly.

With just a chair, a pair of gold shoes, a score  consisting largely of Steven Wright’s deadpan delivery of surreal one-liners and  choreography as adroit as it was fluid and intelligent, O’Donoghue leveraged my attention, sympathy and self-consciousness in an understated yet genuinely touching manner.

And ACTIONS? Well, yesterday I wrote that John Scott can’t speak Spanish. I still think that’s so…but by God, he’s fluent in dance, as evidenced by this work of assiduousness, boldness and dexterity. The interaction of dancers Michael Snipe Jr and Marc Mann, both with each other and the audience, was boisterous, friendly, rivalrous…and utterly entertaining. Yet beneath all that there existed a sober, serious intent. A sense of the purposeful, of work, and of getting work done. Their brusqueness in delivery – whether of quip or gesture – fascinated. And how, even at points of the greatest physical exertion and tension, the notion abided that these were rehearsing performers, running practiced routines, for roles (and lives?) so all-consuming that truly noticing the other becomes unimaginable.

Re-Presenting Ireland runs again today as well as next weekend at DanceHouse. And you can book your tickets right here.

I feel a clarification is in order.

A few days ago, on this very blog, I confessed (not altogether seriously) that I’d love to see an audience that cared enough to storm a stage. Well, at last night’s performance of Repair, two doughty spectators cared enough to get up, give voice to their disgruntlement and trundle themselves loudly out of the auditorium. And my goodness, the indignation was palpable. Goaded they were, by God, to take this stand. Scammed they were, by God, for the king’s ransom of twenty euro.

So, to clarify: ladies, whilst I appreciate the gesture, I’m afraid that’s not at all what I’d requested. By storm, I’d meant invasion on principle,  not evasion of the recondite. I wanted dash and daring – not dull and indolent. No, it simply won’t do. Nothing less than a melée of frenzied mavens will meet my needs.

Frankly, I felt a little embarrassed for you. After all, nothing could be worse than picking the wrong battle.

Because Repair really is such a fine, eminently accomplished dance piece. Visual artist Barbara Kilpatrick, composer Elise Kermani and choreographer Vicky Shick have created a work greater than the sum of its parts. It’s not too much to suggest that both Kermani’s score and Kilpatrick’s set and costume design almost constitute characters. Yet the true alembic of the work, it must be acknowledged, is Shick and Jodi Melnick’s duet. In action precise and succinct, both women bring an airy – yet strangely, never unsubstantial – quality into presence. Again and again, the relationship of these women to each other presents itself to us for interrogation. At times, they seem to dance together. Just as often, Shick appears a hidden guide, or the disguised helper in some little known folktale. Mostly, though, you sense that these two reside in different worlds, so that even when face to face, they see each other only through a glass darkly – if at all.

And personally speaking, I find Melnick a wonder. With angular grace, she has the power to infuse motion with a turbulent intensity. And yet, it’s an intensity not at all fraught with emotion. Remarkable.

Alas, my revolutionary guards seemed to have missed all this. What a pity. They will be relieved to learn, however, that their outburst was not the most shocking thing I heard in the auditorium last night. That particular distinction goes to the estimable John Scott and the appalling disservice done by him to the Spanish language.

Lo siento, señor Scott, pero no puedes hablar Español…so for the love of God, cease and desist….

If memory serves, it’s been a good two months since Ellie Creighton bought me coffee in Dunne & Crescenzi. Damn good coffee, too. To anyone who knows her, Creighton is the little marketing machine that could. She’s a workaholic with a heart of gold, butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth and nobody pulls off Jazz Age chic quite like the girl in marketing.

All that makes her likeable. But what makes her interesting is this look she gets sometimes. It’s the kind of look you imagine her getting at a house party, the second she decides she’s going to liven things up. By, y’know, jumping a fence, hotwiring a cement truck and going drag racing on the M50 at four in the morning.

Now, our coffee time was meant to sketch out how this blog should work. And sure, we sketched. But mostly we talked. Actually, mostly Ellie talked – about all the shows lined up, about how everything was falling into place, about how excited she was…

And then she stopped. And got a look in her eye. Correction…she got that look in her eye. ‘There’s this show and it’s got a guy and a girl. And there are these socks, and she’s feeding things into a hoover and…’ She paused. ‘I loved it. I won’t say anymore, but I can’t wait to see what you think.’

She was talking about Alessandro Sciarroni’s Your Girl, a work that, based as it is on Madame Bovary, implicity evokes the incongruity of romantic ideal and unmitigated reality. And yet its ultimate impact is quite contrary to what might be expected of such a provenance.

Under stark lighting, Chiara Bersani and Matteo Ramponi (downstage right, in a wheelchair, and upstage left respectively) meet, challenge but above all engage the audience’s attention. Moving to centre, where an industrial hoover is situated, Bersani first divests herself of her wheelchair’s support. Then, she proceeds to carefully pluck cloth ‘roses’ from her top, each bloom vanishing into the vacuum with a ‘he loves me’, or ‘he loves me not’. Then the top itself and finally her shorts. Each time she switches on the vacuum, her hair is caught, snatched at and whirled around by the expelled air, as if each statement coincides with and expresses an instant of intense emotion.

In the meantime, Ramponi – sitting on a mound of discarded socks and attaching his own socks to three ‘sock ropes’ dangling behind – maintains throughout a self-conscious yet passive demeanour. Joining her, he too strips, Bersani feeding his clothes into the machine (almost without interruption).

As the now naked pair gingerly find each other’s hand, an Italian pop ballad swells triumphantly, bringing this meditation on desire and yearning, self-consciousness and fragility to a quietly affecting and successful conclusion. I only wish we’d had a clearly demarcated ending so that I could have properly expressed my appreciation.

Although it could be asked whether Your Girl veers more towards the installation end of the performance art spectrum, the same could not be asked of the show that preceded it: Se nn ricordo male (If I remember correctly). With a muscular choreography soundly embodied, Eleonora Gennari and Valeria Fiorini establish a vigorous and varied tempo that dispels any hint of the cumbersome or ponderous. In this ‘monologue recited by two voices’, both dancers quite remarkably lend corporeal form to the trace and flash of memory. In motion that though territorially expansive seems ever under restraint, the act of (finally) slipping hands out of pockets is a relief, and pulling feet from shoes, a liberation. The climactic ending underscores it all: the raking violence of emotional memory, how the hook and haul of recall and remembrance can – at one and the same time – drive us towards and deter us from, ransoming the present from the past.

Which reminds me….kudos Creighton. I owe you a coffee.

Following on from yesterday evening’s adventures, let me offer a little advice, in reverse order of importance:

1. Eat something if you’re going to drink anything.

2. See if there are any tickets left for Yvonne Rainer’s RoS Indexical/Spiraling Down. Do it now. Right here.

Now let me explain why.

With RoS Indexical, Rainer uses one of the pivotal moments of recent dance history to fashion an often exhilarating work, capable of provoking both thought and laughter. How she manages this is perhaps most succinctly expressed in the title -  an indexical being an expression whose content varies from context to context. In this case, that expression is an event that has passed into dance lore – the 1913 Paris premiere of Rite of Spring.

RoS opens with four dancers seating themselves at a card table, putting on headphones and, in attempting to sing Stravinsky’s overture, replicating somewhat the effect the dissonance of Stravinsky’s music had almost a century ago. Yet what was (reputedly) for that audience an annoyance, was for those watching last night, a source of interest and even amusement.

Right from the outset, then, mutability of meaning (and thus, reception) is embraced. Throughout, the dancers’ ebullient performance is accompanied – and counterpointed – by the sound score of the BBC’s Riot at the Rite. At one point, the dancers ‘step off-stage’ and behind a large sofa, drinking water, talking and resting. At another, the stage is invaded by spectators planted in the audience, outraged at this ‘travesty’ of a now revered classic. And I’ve gotta say, I loved the touch of two indignant protestors dressed in Roerich’s original costume design…

Rainer’s second work, Spiraling Down, I found to have quite a different tone: Ravel’s Bolero, and a story about running (or a runner) spoken from a lectern by the dancers, or in Rainer’s own recorded voice, constituting the score. The movement of the performers reflected this athletic theme, but it’s movement infused with a giddy, frivolous energy that complements the intricate patterns of motion…and towards the end, it assumes an almost hypnagogic character with arm-whirling hunters in pursuit of prey, spiraling off stage and back again.

Now, before I go any further, I have to go right back to the start of the evening and the show Sunstruck. In a darkened Smock Alley, with nothing more than a circle of chairs, a single light source and two male dancers (Trevor Patrick and Nick Sommerville) dressed in black, Sunstruck created an amazing sense of utterly abstract space, and of cyclical motion within that space. And as the revolution of their bodies conjured with the relativity of distance – now infinitely far, now intimately close – the unhurried rise and fall of light, body and voice wore away the substance of all of it, of all existence. All emptied out, picked clean, worn bare and evoking in this spectator what he imagines is the sensation of happening upon the sun-bleached scattered purity of bones in a desert.

That emptying out of substance sort of brings me in a roundabout way back to RoS Indexical. As one of the founders of  Judson Dance Theater and Grand Union, Rainer was a part of a generation which, in its rejection of the constraints of modern dance and ballet, seems almost a recursion of the avant-garde of the early 20th century. That still earlier generation didn’t just test limits. They tore them down, overleapt them, inverted and subverted them. And because people (as a society, or as a class within a society) held a firm, at times absolutist conviction about the inviolability of an art form’s canon, code, standard or form…well, to see it violated couldn’t help but incite a firestorm of reaction.

What’s peculiar to me is how each iteration of this impulse seems fated to be weaker and less impactful than that which preceded it. I suppose it’s simply a testament to the success of all such movements (like the Dada movement) that it’s hard to imagine any audience being thrown into convulsions of outrage by anything.

And I guess that’s a good thing.

That said, I have to admit that sometimes – not often, but sometimes – I’d love just once to see an audience that cared enough to storm a stage. Unrehearsed.

Which in turn brings me back to my first bit of advice – why you need to eat something if you plan to drink anything…

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…

PERFORATIONS FESTIVAL
DUBROVNIK & ZAGREB
24-30 SEPTEMBER 2009

Should anyone invite you to Dubrovnik , drop everything and go!  What an amazing city; it combines a long and troubled history with stunning architecture and the surrounding sea.  The complexity of such a combination is mind boggling.  Looking through a book on the 1990’s war with photos of massive destruction, it is hard to believe that, not 20 years later, thousands of tourists get off cruise ships each morning and fill the streets with shoppers.

Organised by Zvonomir Dobrovic, the founder of the ground-breaking festival, Queer Zagreb, this first Perforations Festival included theatre, dance and performance art from Bulgaria, Serbia, Slovenia and Macedonia, as well as Croatia.  The first three days took place in Dubrovnik, the next three in Zagreb.  There is a strong conceptual streak in contemporary visual art as well as performing arts in the region and the borders between the genres are quite fluid.  Siniša Labrović is one such conceptual artist whose work is often critical of today’s culture.  His work, Perpetuum Mobile, posits that the body is a self-sustainable unit.  This is illustrated, for 15 minutes, by the expulsion and ingestion of his own urine.  This was, hands down, the most radical of the performances we saw, an especially tough one for my jet-lagged American colleagues sitting in the front row.

Via Negativa is a Slovenian theatre company that, over the past several years, has been working on a series of performances investigating the seven deadly sins.  One piece incorporates the role of the dead rabbit from Joseph Beuys’ first exhibition, another involves a rhythmic game with knives in which the hands of the two performers are nicked, leaving bloody traces.

Branko Brezovec , a pioneer of Croatian theatre from the 1970’s, founded the theatre group Coccolemocco at the age of 15.  So So, a co-production with the French Compagnie des Loups, was performed in a penthouse hotel suite in Cavtat, south of Dubrovnik on the border of Montenegro.  Three actors, speaking in French and Croatian, engage in mysterious and portentous behaviours.  The full moon, setting into the sea, added an ineffable element of décor.

Dance artists included Dalija Aćin from Serbia whose work, Duets/Meet the Expectations involved individual audience members entering a performance area with the choreographer which was visible from the viewing area but acoustically isolated.  I was only able to stay long enough to watch two of these encounters, in both of which the pair conversed but never moved.  BADco., from Croatia, presented a work entitled The League of Time.  A “mad” scientist filled blackboards with endless equations while two women seemed to chase futurist possibilities, bounding in and out of the space, “flying” on a ladder etc.

The Slovenian choreographer Mala Kline showed a work in progress, The End, “a game piece” somewhat inspired by Artaud.  Trying on, trying out characters to see what we, the audience, wanted, she became more and more frantic but never quite found her answer.
Ivo Dimčev is a Bulgarian choreographer whose solo, Lili Handel, has toured widely.  In Dubrovnik, he presented that solo plus Paris, created for Christian Bakalov, a fellow Bulgarian dancer currently based in that city.  An extreme performance, Bakalov’s tasks involve both the painful (hopping on his knees) and the risky (slip-sliding on a painted – or bloody –floor).  A poignant portrait emerges of the anger and humiliation one experiences as an immigrant.  A happy substitution for a company that had to cancel was the young Macedonian choreographer Kire Miladinoski who presented One Way Inside, a short solo and a duet with Ana Josifovska.  His vocabulary Is very personal and I hope to see more of his work.

The schedule was intense, with performances starting from 7pm and going until after midnight.  But this gave us day time to see the islands off the coast of Dubrovnik and swim in the sea – a great bonus.  Heading back to the hotel at 1:30am one night also gave us the incredible opportunity to see the main street empty.  Five stars!

VENTANA DE DANZA MADRILEÑA
17-20 SEPTEMBER

This “Window on Madrid Dance” was organised by the Madrid Regional Government to showcase 20 works – both full works and excerpts – by Madrid’s dance companies over four days.  The second edition of this biennial event, the performances and studio showings took place in the new Canal Theatres and the Canal Dance Centre (with nine studios!).  About 70 programmers and professionals were in attendance, 18 of them from outside Spain – from as near as Portugal and as far away as Egypt.

The work covered a very broad range from traditional Spanish and “new flamenco” to experimental, from children’s work and family events to ballet.  But no matter what the genre, an intensive energy permeated every performance.  The commitment of the dancers and musicians was wholehearted and their technical skills were, across the board, more than equal to the choreography’s requirements.

The event was an excellent introduction to the work being created in the Region of Madrid, which is less well known internationally than the work from Catalunya – primarily from the city of Barcelona – which seems to tour more widely.  Madrid’s contemporary artists include Pedro Berdayes and Chevi Muraday, who have been working for many years, and Daniel Abreu and Janet Novàs, relative newcomers.  All these artists incorporate strong visual imagery in their work.  Prominent flamenco artists included Aída Gómez and Antonio Najarro, both of whom have a stage presence that singes everyone in the house.  Both Najarro and Cruceta Flamenco, a newer company, add jazz musicians to their ensembles.  Ballet de la Comunidad de Madrid – Compañia Victor Ullate comprises a host of well-trained young dancers who revel in the partnering and split second timing of contemporary ballet.

Ana Cabo, Mar López and Fanny Skouvari, the organisers, were indefatigably cheerful and kept us on schedule from morning through night.  Fortunately, they included long lunches and late dinners to keep our energy up!  Saturday night of this weekend was Noche Blanca, or White Night, and there was, I’m told, dancing in the streets till the wee hours!

TANZ IM AUGUST
21-23 AUGUST

After arriving, I found my way to UferHallen, a rehearsal studio north of the city.  The U-Bahn is fairly decipherable, even for a non-German speaker, and I had good directions and a Google map.  A pair of U.S. artists, Mark Coniglio and Dawn Stoppielo, was working on their new creation, Loop Diver, a piece that would open in October at the University of Nebraska’s Lied Center.  Since Mark has moved to Berlin, they were finding it more efficient and less expensive to work in Europe.  As Mark’s contribution of media and sets was not yet in place, it was a good challenge to imagine those visual elements behind the looping choreographic material.

From there we went, in a smashing thunderstorm, to the HAU (an amalgamation of several theaters on the banks of the River Ufer, anchored by the Hebbel am Ufer) to see Parades & Changes, Replays, a re-interpretation of Anna Halprin’s pioneering 1965 work, Parades & Changes.  Directed by French choreographer Anne Collod, the work features an international cast.  Although not an exact imitation of the original work, the cast traveled to Halprin’s northern California studio (designed by her husband, Lawrence Halprin, the renowned landscape architect who died on 25 October), for her approval of the props and the working concepts.  Comparing this version to an archival film I’ve seen, the 21st century performance is much more polished and presentational but retains a fundamental honesty that was greatly appreciated by the audience.

David Zambrano’s Shock* was presented at Radialsystem V, a space that is the home of Sasha Waltz & Guests but, as a privately funded space, is also regularly rented out for meetings and conferences.  Set on the River Spree, the building was one of the old water pumping stations of Berlin.

While similar in vocabulary to Soul Project (seen at DDF 09), Shock takes place onstage, on a white floor, and is set to Requiems by Mozart and Vivaldi as well as Elvis Presley’s “Love Me Tender”.  This piece, for an all male cast, is structured into duets which appear highly competitive and somewhat aggressive.  Even from the more standard point of view of a seated audience, in contrast to walking among the dancers as we did for Soul Project, their energy is palpable.

*Shock was not a Tanz im August presentation.

Sunday was a beautiful sunny day and I couldn’t resist taking a boat ride on the River Spree.  Undeniably for the tourist, it nonetheless offered a new perspective on the city.

A somewhat different view of the Bode Museum.

The Akademie der Kunste is semi-hidden in the Tiergarten, a large and lush garden in the middle of the city.  Accords, a piece by Thomas Hauert, a Swiss choreographer based in Brussels, was presented in the Akademie’s theatre.  In this work, set to a wide-ranging musical collage, the highly skilled cast of seven dancers follows a score of improvisational tasks, primarily focused on following the leader.  In duets and with the full cast, the dancers try to keep up with whomever leads for a particular period of time.  The results are often comical, occasionally inspired and wholly delightful.

There was much more work to be seen in the following days, including The Song by Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker and this summer’s festival favourite, the Spanish flamenco dancer Israel Galvan.   But Dublin, and other festivals beyond, called.  Hopefully, I’ll be back in Berlin before another ten years go by.

Laurie will be attending the 14th meeting of the Aerowaves network in Vilnius, the European Capital of Culture, this week (the hotel she’s staying at has guaranteed her “an Irish welcoming smile”!!) in order to take part in the assessment of over 300 applications from promising young companies and choreographers across Europe who are seeking to tour abroad.  The chosen artists will then be invited by the partners to perform in their cities.

For the first time this year, approximately 80 performances took place beyond London in Moscow, Oslo, Tallinn, Vilnius, Copenhagen, Dublin (as part of Absolut Fringe), Amsterdam, Luxembourg, Frankfurt, Prague, Poznan, Warsaw, Zurich, Lausanne, Bassano del Grappa, Rome, Porto, Limassol, Osijek and Zagreb. Aerowaves plans to extend the number of opportunities in 2010. This expansion of Aerowaves performances is a development that provides a European network without precedent in dance.

Watch this space for news of whom we’ll be inviting to Dublin for DDF 2010!

Dublin Dance Festival had its first event for Friends on Friday, October 2. The Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival kindly treated DDF’s Friends as if we were their own so that we could experience the phenomenon that is DV8.

To Be Straight With You proved a powerful, often violent and beautiful work – vignettes of spoken word and dance conjuring characters and events that were variously shocking, disturbing, humorous, full of fear and sometimes glimmering with hope.  The ‘In Conversation’ session that took place beforehand with Artistic Director Lloyd Newson (moderated by the omnipresent Caroline Williams) provided insight into the factual background of the work without giving too much away.  It was a great chance to see some world-class dance theatre and catch up after the summer.

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EDINBURGH
AUGUST 13-14 2009

Early morning in August, it must be time to head for the airport for my third annual pilgrimage to Edinburgh’s Dance Base to “give dance a chance” as Morag Deyes, Artistic Director, exhorts.  Each year, Dance Base programs a multitude of mixed bills that run at different times, day and night, over at least ten days, giving audiences and visiting curators a good chance to see the work.  It’s really worth it, with tickets at only £5 and a lovely cafe where you can re-charge between shows without having to deal with the crowds (or the rain) outside.

The fare ranges widely each year – this season encompassing dance for children (the delightful Dilly Dilly by Tabula Rasa Dance Company), youth dance (Something About Others by Nottingham Youth Dance in association with New English Contemporary Ballet), contemporary Bharatanatyam (Ring Cycle by Shamita Ray), and everything in between and beyond.  Fearghus Ó Conchúir with Li Ke and Yin Yi reprised Dialogue, a dance conversation between cultures and between dance and sound.  Appel, by Company Décalage, brought street dance and capoeira vocabulary together with Indian flute and tabla.  Company Chameleon’s Rites featured two dancers to watch – Anthony Missen and Kevin Turner.  Watch IT, by Anthony Mills, was a send-up of a man thoroughly obsessed by his television.  Laila Diallo showed The Wayside, a subtle and moving solo and Portuguese choreographer Pere Faura danced with Gene Kelly in the projected film of Singin’ in the Rain in a piece entitled This is a Picture of a Person I Don’t Know.

In addition to Ó Conchúir, Irish artists included Fidget Feet, presenting the energetic aerial dance RAW offsite at Out of the Blue Drill Hall; Rex Levitates’ Unsung was due up the following week.

Among other Fringe dance shows, there was a showcase organized by Jodi Kaplan from New York featuring seven U.S. companies from five cities and David Parker and The Bang Group’s riotous Show Down, inspired by the 1940’s musical Annie Get Your Gun.

Despite the construction of a tram line that had streets torn up all over town, the jostling crowds were generally cheerful as they gathered around clowns, drummers, bagpipe players, fire eaters etc.  Festival fever electrifies the air; you could stay for weeks and still not see everything on offer.  It’s an exciting, if overwhelming, experience.
Two days is barely enough to scratch the surface.

PARIS QUARTIER D’ETE
JULY 22-29, 2009

Everyone knows that Paris shuts down in the summer – especially in August but even July can be fairly bleak with boulangeries, charcuteries et restaurants fermées. Twenty years ago, it was decided that a festival in and around Paris would wake its citizens out of the torpor of summer. Thus was Paris quartier d’été (the neighborhood of summer) born.

The multi-disciplinary festival always includes a lot of music in addition to a bit of circus, theatre and dance. Outdoor venues are used as much as possible. For this year’s anniversary edition, several significant older works were presented and succeeded in meeting the festival’s goal of offering work that you hadn’t even realized you’d been waiting to see. In past years, I’ve seen Merce Cunningham (who sadly passed away while I was in Paris) and Elizabeth Streb on a fantastic stage constructed in the courtyard of the Palais Royal. This year, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Ook, created in association with Theater Stap and Nienke Reehorst, took to this stage on a night when it had been raining up until five minutes prior to curtain time. Theater Stap is a Belgian company comprised of actors who are mentally disabled. Ook, which means “also” in Flemish, encompasses the philosophy behind this company. The images created by Larbi and Reehorst were beautiful and universal. The sight of ten performers riding bicycles around the stage was especially resonant given the diversion yet inter-dependence of their paths.

Compagnie Retouramont (pictured above) presented Vide Accordé (a hard one to translate, something about a Valuable Void?) in several sites, both urban and less so.  I journeyed via RER to Bagneaux where folding chairs were set up in a semicircle around a green park at the end of a small cul de sac (part of the adventure of the festival is finding the performance locations!).  The 30-minute performance consisted of a trio of incredibly virtuosic women climbing, crossing and spinning on the wires rigged simply via a large crane.  The local audience of all ages was enthralled.

Carlotta Sagna’s Tourlourou, a tough solo set on a small square miked stage, took place in the garden of a library in Saint-Ouen (as well as at two other locations).  Satchie Noro’s point shoes stabbed and pounded the wooden floor; the amplified echo seemed to shake the trees.

Josef Nadj, born in the former Yugoslavia, is the prolific Artistic Director of the National Choreographic Center in Orléans.  His work, Le Temps du Repli, was seen in the 2004 International Dance Festival Ireland (now Dublin Dance Festival).  Within Paris quartier d’été, he was given a special residence at the Maison des Métallos at which he showed two performance pieces and exhibited a series of drawings.  Les Corbeaux is a work created in collaboration with composer/musician Akosh Szelevényi. Without giving it away, the transformation from man to crow was fascinating.  Petit psaume du matin, created in 2001, is a duet with Dominique Mercy (a long-time member of Pina Bausch’s company).  Consisting of a series of somewhat surreal vignettes, the impact of the piece is heightened by the power of the two men commandeering the stage.  You don’t want it to end.

And, of course, one wishes that a week in Paris would, likewise, never end…………

MONTPELLIER DANSE (FR)
JUNE 22-28, 2009

Festival los Veranos en la Villa/Matadero Theater, Madrid (ES)
July 2, 2009

Montpellier Danse combines the blissful weather of the south of France with an excellent swath of dance companies from young and experimental through experienced and traditional (not necessarily in those pairings!).  Originally confined to a few theatres in the old centre, Montpellier Danse now programs in venues around the Languedoc-Rousillon region (thankfully providing bus transport for professional visitors).  In its 29th edition this summer, it was laying a little low in order to spring a grand 30th anniversary event in 2010.  Nonetheless, there were plenty of performances and a good number of colleagues with whom to discuss them afterwards over a glass of the regional rosé.  As the website says, Montpellier Danse is “Un paradis pour les amoureux de la danse.”

Among the artists performing that last week of June were a number of French companies. Local choreographer Didier Théron teamed up with former Trisha Brown dancer Keith Thompson on Democratic Combine, shown outdoors.  The two are somewhat hampered by costumes filled with air – kind of fat suits – that provide comical balance problems.  The high winds at the opening performance added to the challenge.  Yet the piece has a deeper layer, an investigation of teamwork and collaboration.  The Bagouet Studio in the Choreographic Centre is an excellent black box space (when its skylights are covered – a light-filled rehearsal studio when they’re open) that seats about 150 and has a stage that is more than 15m deep (green again…).  David Wampach and Héla Fattoumi/Eric Lamoureux presented work there that questioned identity – Wampach’s Auto looking at gender issues and illusion while Fattoumi/Lamoureux’s Manta explored the role the veil plays for Muslim women.
Angelin Preljocaj (whose Empty Words, parts 1 and 2, was seen at DDF 2008) performed a tour de force solo for himself inspired by and incorporating the text of Jean Genet’s Le Funambule.  At the intimate Opéra Comédie, a stunning set and gorgeous lighting enhanced the work’s power.  American choreographer Stephen Petronio (seen at IDFI in 2004) created Tragic/Love, a full-company work for the Ballet de Lorraine based on letters written to the Juliet Foundation, in Verona.  Yes, people actually seek advice on love-related problems from Shakespeare’s famous character!  Brazilian choreographer, Bruno Beltrão, and his company, Grupo de Rua, presented H3, an astounding and sophisticated piece, which was based on but not stuck in hip-hop vocabulary.

Of course, there were many more I missed – Emanuel Gat, Raimund Hoghe, Vera Mantero, Mark Morris, Filiz Sizanli and Mustafa Kaplan….  I always leave vowing to stay longer NEXT year!

The following week I took an overnight trip to Madrid to see an exquisite programme presented by the Baryshnikov Arts Center that had been touring in Europe.  Three Solos and a Duet were performed by Mikhail Baryshnikov and Ana Laguna, both riveting.  Two of the four pieces (the duet, Place, and Solo for Two (danced primarily by Laguna with a cameo by Baryshnikov) were choreographed by Mats Ek.  These works brought out both the depth of the performers’ technical virtuosity and their confident and elegant stage presence.  The other two solos, performed by Baryshnikov, were Alexei Ratmansky’s Valse-fantasie and Years Later by Benjamin Millepied.  The latter charmingly incorporated film of the young Baryshnikov, ebullient in his adolescent physicality, observed by his older persona.

The Teatro Matadero, on the grounds of an old slaughterhouse just a few Metro stops from the centre of Madrid, is part of a fascinating cultural facility.  And the 38° sunny weather was a real treat for 24 hours after the thunderstorms in Dublin the previous night!

Yep. You missed it. The last chance saloon has stopped serving.

Relax.

We gave the festival quite a send off. Aretha Franklin featured, James Brown did a turn and we got to experience some of the best soul-rending music I’ve ever heard….even if it was recorded. But what really raised the temperature in Smock Alley were David Zambrano’s Soul Project performers who – inspired by and driven to emulate in their own idiom the powerful example of the vocalists – expressed in movement an extraordinary depth of passion, revealing an almost spiritual intensity. Moving around the space and getting as close as possible to watch each dancer move, it was impossible to avoid sensing both their abandon in performance and the effect of this on one’s fellow spectators.

Mmmaybe it was a little too long…but really, what I felt it needed were a few more audience members. And the last two weeks deserved a show that reminded us a little of how much fun dance is, and how enlivening. Afterwards, Caroline ‘Rummy’ Williams led the march over to Project for the big send-off, the ample flow of liquor given a twist by being served by trained fire-eating monkeys; about midnight, Laurie started cutting her favourite deck and….but hey, you know what? You missed it. Better luck next year.

What now? Well, if you like, you can revisit past glories by just scrolling down the page.

But me? To be honest, so distraught am I at the ruthless cutbacks in dance provision in the Irish Republic, I’m heading to Romania for a theatre festival. So, if you’re in Sibiu over the next two weeks…heh…well, let’s just say, les jeux sont faits…

One more night.

One more show to see…and I can’t really believe it. It’s been quite an experience.

And the fact that my last show will be David Zambrano’s Soul Project sort of feels…right. Fitting. Apt. Because the chance to witness so many performances, to enjoy so many productions into which people have poured body, inspiration and heart…it brings home to you how the arts aren’t just another industry. Sure, artists and companies may talk about developing a marketable product or how best to brand ourselves and market our events. Some days we even find ourselves unconsciously parroting the squawks of some captain of industry we overheard on radio. But I bet most of us can’t put any real feeling into those lines.

Because in our hearts, we know that what we do…it’s not really the stuff of indices. Or earnings reports. Or economic summaries. Because we know – from experience – that the measure of a work’s worth is not the aggregate mean take from some notional demographic. No.

It’s the jagged silence that falls in a theatre house on the edge. It’s a movement phrase that catches you off guard and steals your breath away. It’s the scene that leaves you feeling both damned and redeemed. And it’s the instant between blackout and lights-up, when you have to come back just to get to your feet.

See, that’s what this festival has been. A series of soul projects.

That soulful quality was palpable with José Navas’ Miniatures, a work that drew the spectator’s gaze past the apparent, privileging us with a glimpse of the desires, compulsion, abandon and nostalgia that make up his past. It was a beautiful intimate presentation – one that could so easily have veered into the mawkish, camp or sentimental at various junctures, yet didn’t thanks to Navas’ choreographic integrity and intense commitment to his craft as performer. Perfectly judged and a festival highlight for me.

Similarly – though an utterly different kind of work in derivation and delivery – Ioanna Mona Popovici’s Work in Regress reflected the artist’s intensity in its conception and realisation. Even if I don’t tend to agree with her starting definition of authority, the piece that resulted from that definition perfectly captured the absurd lengths to which a power centre, stripped of its habitual (or any) periphery, might go in seeking to re-establish its purpose for being. All that…and it made me laugh too.

And then there’s Lucy Guerin’s Structure and Sadness, a work that artfully led us to grasp the reality that, in Melbourne in 1970, a dreadful thing happened. Guerin’s composition raised its structures and paced its momentum with such sensitivity to pendle and weight, balance and link that it made the suddenness of the radio report a truly breaking kind of news. And yet, as art has a unique power to do, it inevitably swayed us to an understanding that all this…passes. However sad it may be. That though all may falter and fail, all may yet rise again – indeed will rise, inexorably, no matter how terrible and great the tragedy.

And that’s why work like this, work like this festival has made it possible for us to see, well…you can’t denominate the worth of such a thing; can’t price it, tag it, stack it or stock it. Because, recession or boomtime, numbers can’t count its true worth.

But we can.

Final soul project tonight. One last time.

Earlier this morning, I got an email from a friend asking for a little help. (Yes, this does happen occasionally.) And, just to show she wasn’t being completely self-centred, she kindly asked if I was – to quote – ‘all danced out yet’. I know! The sheer temerity of the gel; the brazen, bare-faced British cheek of it all…

…but I have to be honest.

When I opened her email, I kind of felt like I was. Terrible thing to admit, I know. But how many more ways can I describe a body moving? Or rather, how many more ways can I describe the response that a moving body (or bodies) can elicit from me? I felt tapped out. And the prospect of tapping out another blog on another piece of dance…well, let’s put it this way: I wasn’t exactly enthused.

That was, until I dragged myself over to DanceHouse for the second Mixed Bill of this year’s Re-Presenting Ireland. I’d caught the first Bill last Friday but, as I’d had to leave early, I’d held back from putting digits to board. I’m glad I did.

Now, I’ve seen a lot of great work over the past week or so. Fantastic work, mostly by choreographers and companies visiting these shores for the festival. And it’s a privilege, truly. But to have a chance to see a selection of work by some of the finest emerging and established choreographers in the Irish scene is one of the best things about this element of the festival programme. For despite the limited time available to them, those chosen do indeed represent much of what is excellent about the art form in Ireland.

Kicking off the first bill, Dylan Quinn’s Fallout initially had me worried. Through the persona of a brash media professional, Quinn strove to direct our attention to the way violence can be objectified, neutralised – even glamourised – depending on how it’s treated by the media machine we rely on. Now, the fear I had was whether he’d be able to both sustain the integrity of his initial choice of persona whilst successfully shifting to a more subtle, complex interrogation effected by movement. Happily, my concern was quickly dispelled. And Bonus Tracks revealed the robust quality of movement that is a unique strength.

As for Getting Lost, Liz Roche’s exploration of what happens when both dancer and spectator are asked to process a large amount of fast-paced physical data…well, to begin with, Chen and O’Malley are two of my favourite performers to watch. As far as I’m concerned, you could just have the two of them skipping rope and they’d find a way to make it interesting. Which, of course, is not at all to denigrate the quality of Roche’s composition. The relentlessness with which the piece was imbued by her never felt stochastic, frenzied or chaotic; instead, possibly thanks to the pattern interrupts of easy to apprehend gestures, it seemed to infuse the viewer with a strangely energised ease, a surrender to the overwhelming flow and interaction of two bodies, one where tension wound would unwind again. to begin again; a step back to move on again.

Junk Ensemble’s Drinking Dust was spectacular. Touching adeptly on the theme of memory, Jessica and Megan Kennedy’s work has strange shadows attending it. Its gothic nature evokes an odd terrain where memory and fantasy have equal purchase, one where light is not guaranteed a place in the scheme of things. The repetitive yet striking images of this piece seem to play with everything from themes of ageing, absence and loss to those of power-reversal, domination and the illicit eroticism of precocious sexuality…but as I happen to know the said choreographers in a social sense, I think it best I leave it there…

Today’s pieces were of similar power – Ingrid Nachstern’s Watch…Es’ treadmill of motion adequately conveyed the pressures under which men (in certain sectors of modern life) find themselves living. The four male performers were driven to their limit in the repetitive, industrial, clockwork calling of the work. Intriguingly though, I couldn’t help noticing how my response to the piece had changed from when I saw it last year, in light of the collapse of the global economy and the thought of how the lives of the men that inspired this must have fallen asunder. An interesting lesson in context for any work.

Jean Butler’s thicker than this was infused with that gentle releasing into a void of freedom I’ve noticed before in other work by her. In an introspective, tentative manner, Butler dissects and attends to all that comes naturally to her – those forms and techniques that have been so fully made a part of how she moves, that she barely notices them anymore. It’s almost as if there’s a suspicion in her mind of her own corporeal impulses, that somehow they’re not quite her own yet. And in her consequent isolation on stage, we get a glimpse of a beautiful, personal unfolding of a dancer into a new space and onto a new path.

Finally, Phrases from a Lost Year, Ríonach Ní Néill’s latest work-in-progress confirms for me Ní Néill’s status as one of the most engaging choreographers currently at work in Ireland. Situating some of the audience within the field of play, the three performers (joined at the very end by Ní Néill herself) play, manipulate, explore with, advance upon and oversee each other with an at once innocent yet sardonic quality. The peculiarly humane, intimate quality of physical movement is thus tempered by a sharper atmosphere, resulting in a work that I can only describe as…well, dammit, sanguine – in the best, most generous sense of that word.

So that’s it for today – I did want to compare and contrast José Navas’ wonderful Miniatures and Ioana Mona Popovici’s entertaining Work in Regress but hey, I have to give you some reason to come back here tomorrow…for the last day of the festival….now shoo.

I’m busy.

Okay, ultra brief now as I have decided, in between the summer showers, to embrace my status as worst festival blogger. Ever.

Forgive me, you most honoured hordes who – in your fives and tens – descend upon this site daily…

Loin…(Far…), Rachid Ouramdane’s beautiful multimedia performance meditated – through audio and video testament, interwoven with poetry and movement – on the far-reaching and subtly corrosive effects of violence. The psychic fissures, the intergenerational silences, the disorientation of displacement and the vertiginous state of being neither this nor that – all were handled deftly and intelligently.

It was a work that was – as Helen Meany put it in the post-show discussion – complex, layered and beautiful. Many of the themes touched on could not help but resonate with an Irish audience – war, colonisation and how conflict and suffering on a collective scale impacts uniquely on each family and individual. Not to mention how one’s identity is found, indeed largely created, at the point where two people meet. Now, as Rachid himself said, it is stating the obvious to say this – to say that identity is shaped by context. But it interests him and, to his credit, the work that resulted from his interest held mine. Perhaps that’s because, as he put it, he prefers to get specific to the individuals from whom he draws his material, attempting to revisit the facts of ‘History’ through familial accounts and recollections of those same events. And, what’s just as interesting, how these memories and stories are often never passed on from the elder generation to the younger; how, sometimes, it’s easier to tell them to a stranger. To one who does not know you as the kind, respectable person you appear now. One who you do not care might look differently at you and think worse of you, upon hearing of all you did or all that was done to you…because sometimes, amnesia is the wisest way to remember your past for the future. And there was a quiet poignancy and dark truth here. Anyone whose family has been caught up in anything like this, knows this aspect of war’s aftermath.

Any concerns? Well, I worried at times if it was overall a little too light in touch. I wondered if the emotional distance that can attend the use of image projection might derail things. And I questioned whether Rachid himself, beautiful a performer as he is, was almost a little too cool in his presence. But, to be honest, I’ve easily pushed these aside. Even if it was not a piece that offered any shocking revelations or demanded of me a profound reconsideration of reality, it was aesthetically striking, quietly intelligent and emotionally engaging.

Okay, off to see a few more tonight: Miniatures and Work in Regress.

And, oh, if you’re there and know me…please, don’t let me drink anything.

Damn. That was a busy evening. But a fruitful one, seeing as I had the pleasure of catching two shows in one great venue – Daghdha Dance Company’s Standing in Ink, followed by Rachid Ouramdane’s Loin…(Far…)(which I’ll do a post on later) in what’s practically the festival’s second home, Project Arts Centre. And I love it. Stepping into Project’s foyer just before a show is like stumbling into some kind of arts DMZ. Whatever it is about the place – and I don’t know if it’s the building, the programme, the clientele or some combination of all three – it makes any discussion or debate feel all the more intense. Suddenly, it feels like the stakes have been raised. And while this can play havoc with interpersonal relations…let’s face it – there’s nothing like it to get you psyched up for a show or exhibition.

Take the Daghdha piece. Choreographed by Michael Klien, Standing in Ink presents itself as ‘a dialogue between two dancers and a choreographer’, the two dancers in question being the talented and accomplished Mark Carberry and Laura Dannequin. Ostensibly, this work results from a year’s worth of conversation amongst all three, the performers becoming ‘movement-ink’, their actions tracking each shift in relationship and perspective, allowing them both to learn about each other as well as disclosing a new world in dance.

Now, in watching the piece, I’ve no doubts about the commitment of all to the task at hand – that of ‘continuously questioning the very concept of dance and each other,’ with each show ‘presenting various markers of this ongoing process.’ Supplementary to the happenings on-stage was a short text by Alexis Clancy, a mathematician invited to collaborate with the artistic team (and involved for quite some time now in Daghdha’s investigations of process, system and the nature of choreography). Certainly, from the outset, Carberry and Dannequin demonstrate an attitude of acute sensitivity to, yet remoteness from each other’s presence. Unfortunately, their spasmodic, struggling, disjointed actions, episodically interspersed with a clinging, promiscuous intimacy, suggest little in the way of a dialogue. Little in the way of questioning. Little in the way of interrogation or investigation or elucidation. Simply, it felt in its earnest formlessness as contrived as any work of empty convention.

Strangely enough, this sensation was further strengthened by the presence of a rather large fly in the theatre. As it tumbled and dived and smacked against lights, dancers and spectators, it’s quite intelligible – yet unpredictable and so strangely engaging – motion contrasted with the performance proper. And I felt compelled to wonder: what, really, is being learned here?

Now, don’t get me wrong – I happen to think Klien’s (and Daghdha’s) attention to ‘the aesthetics of change’ worthwhile. And the inspiration, parallels and analogies that can be drawn from a range of academic and scientific fields of enquiry are valid and appropriate, with certain reservations. But, ultimately, I suspect ‘liberating’ choreography as a word to describe (as suggested here) the shaping of those interactions, relationships, constellations and proportionalities that make up reality…well, it risks ‘liberating’ dance from its own nature . Sure, patterns, cycles, repetitions, resonances can be found everywhere. This has always been known and taken advantage of in all the arts. And dance uses these things too. But choreography is its own thing; dance exists in its own right, on its own level, in its own domain, with concerns and powers proper to itself. Such a broad definition at best risks delivering us an art form denatured and deracinated rather than primal and vital. At worst, it risks making dance irrelevant and choreography defunct.

But even if they haven’t found an answer to please me, at least the guys in Limerick are in dialogue with something. Which makes their presence in Project unsurprising and very welcome.

Unlike the fly.

You know what? This really is the festival that keeps on giving. Certainly when it comes to providing starting points for conversation, drink-fuelled or otherwise.

Take, for instance, last night’s show: Happy Hour. Now, I’m going to get to the piece itself in a matter of moments, so bear with me. But just to say that the one thing, at least, it has the power to reminds us of is that, when it comes to drink culture, precious little stands to distinguish we Irish from any of the ‘home nations’ across the water. I mean, we might as well rebrand ourselves John Bull’s Other Local.

Now, sure, I could carry on from there. I could really let this rip. I could roar and rant about identity politics, the failure to decolonise and the inherent contradiction in fostering notions of shared nationhood around a substance that actually corrodes a sense of selfhood.

But I’m not. Because neither you nor I would find that enjoyable. And that’s kind of the point, see? Because if there’s one thing Happy Hour is, it’s enjoyable.

Performed and written by Wendy Houstoun (with additional material by Tim Etchells), this is one of the finest and funniest amalgams of text and movement I’ve seen in some time. Houstoun – as a barmaid on the bender of a lifetime, in a life lived in a world on the batter, in some country on the lash, in some town on a perpetual razz – displays superb comic timing, delivering lines and movement with equal skill.

The work’s deeper power, to my mind, lies in the tension between the clichéd, involuntary phrases that flood from her mouth and the involuntary, repetitive movements that flow from her body. As if some unconscious instinct for a life or a purpose keeps pushing up, desperate to break free of the intoxication of the habitual, yet never succeeding. Cumulatively, Houstoun’s exaggerated and directionless action in both word and gesture conveys acutely the sense of a life lived floundering, and of a society foundering. It’s also notable that this sense is right there, right from the start. It’s present in the habitual utterances we all know, the questions we’ve asked and answered for ourselves, the ones with which the performance begins – So. What can I give you? The usual? You need something to raise your spirits….

Certainly, as the piece unfolds and she becomes increasingly inebriated, incoherent and unrestrained, the sense of the individual comes more to the fore, yet that wider, cultural significance never quite departs the stage. She comes to embody every person. Everyman and everywoman. Certainly anyone who’s ever ended up at the wrong end of a liquor bottle.

And perhaps that’s what made it both comforting and uncanny a piece – the knowing laughter as, standing or sitting, we watched our least noble, most pathetic selves here, in this space. It made me think of those drunken, furious arguments over nothing…admit it, you know the ones. Especially the ones other people happen to have when for once you’re sober and in the vicinity. Now, yeah, sure – hilarious…and yet…you can’t let yourself laugh too hard.

Christ, no. Because, Jesus, didn’t the same thing happen me, or near enough? And mightn’t I be tempting fate for the next time I’m out with the lads or herself? And Christ, you should see me when I try to dance. Or stand even, sometimes. But we were happy. And it was good craic, wasn’t it? And we had a good laugh, didn’t we?

Didn’t we?

Final word? Go see it. Last orders here.

I guess I should consider it a positive sign it’s taken me so long to find words for Irish Modern Dance Theatre’s FALL AND RECOVER. I’ve spent the past twenty-four hours returning again and again to programme notes and memory, desperate to find something to grab hold of, to push off from…some kind of hook on which to hang some words.

In fact, it wasn’t until about an hour ago I noticed the quotation by the work’s creator John Scott, of Doris Humphrey, originator of the technique that lent the piece its name: ‘Dance occurs in the frightening moment between falling and recovering by the arc swept by a body moving between equilibrium and uncontrol.’ For Scott, this is analogous to the experience of those who have survived torture.

It’s a moving parallel, and an apt one.

Performed with unassuming poise and intent, the piece begins with words in flood…in conversation, in remembrance. That these are the words of another place, another tongue means nothing. Somehow, at this instant, it’s as if Babel never fell. I just…get it. I recognise that face, infused by story; I’m at ease with this voice as it segueways into song, before falling back again into the easy rhythm of daily life. And in the space of a few moments – and I still don’t quite know how it happened – I found my own voice in the shared idiom of a shared humanity.

With the rest of the company joining, they fell to marking out a past upon the papered floor, sketching windows, doors as they recreated homes…or perhaps more fell demesnes….all soon ripped asunder, a whirlwind of action tearing the very ground out from under the feet of those on-stage. Then began, it seemed, the movement work proper. The press of body to wall, hand to hand, as emanations of life after life described in motion a fragmented and fragmenting world. Bodies separated from, yet reaching out to each other – in breath; in glance; in the gestures and steps of homes far from this one. Images shocked and transfixed the mind – of lined up bodies, backed up then falling slumped…bar one, a seeming lone remembrancer. Or a thousand hands reaching up for some kind of rescue or resolution. But beyond all else, and perhaps this is the most wonderful and surprising of things about this work, was the thundering pulse of life joyously lived. It flashed upon the stage. It blazed out in the sway and stomp and reach of one dancer to another. And it was a good passion, beautiful because not some counterfeit. In the dancers’ performances I glimpsed instances of a genuine – a glorious – exhilaration.

Even when moving as one body – in a gyring line, say – Scott ensures that the distinctiveness of each performer is present. There is no excessive concern for synchronous motion, or the pretence of gestural sameness. A profound shared awareness, yes, yet one that never subsumes in full each individual. Scott’s choreography is, in a way, a geometry, one that describes precisely rather than dogmatically the intricately interwoven forms our humanity assumes.

But that’s how it is in Scott’s work, it seems. The same principle might be observed in how Eamon Fox’s beautiful lighting scheme or Rossa Ó Snodaigh superb musical accompaniment are integrated into the entire production. Similarly, as a spectator, you never feel the slightest hint of prescriptivity concerning what conclusions ought be drawn from what you witness. And yet it’s a testament to the strength of Scott’s choreography that, despite this, you leave the theatre imbued with a sense that this is not ‘victim art’. No. It is art that directs us to something that transcends identities…while yet affirming the dignity of one’s identity.

So what about that quote? Well, it wasn’t so much the quote itself as that one word: ‘arc’. See, I was looking for some image to express the effect of FALL AND RECOVER on me…and that handed it to me.

Arc lights.

Now, the principle behind them is quite simple – the ‘arc’ is the result of the electrical breakdown of a gas between two electrodes, through which a current is flowing. An arc is a source of prodigious heat and light, capable of vaporising most things. Quite destructive things, really. Yet I couldn’t help feeling how it somehow fitted.

Because in the final minutes of FALL AND RECOVER each performer traces, in salt, the outline of their bodies, prone upon a dark floor, as if offering some small testament to their having been here. Then…they leave. And leave only traces – of the mothers and fathers, daughters and sons, brothers and sisters who just seconds before had been. Now it was as if all that they were – their songs, their words, their expressions – lay reduced to a faint outline of salt, as if some fire had rendered them down to some bitter residue. As if they’d been burned clean away in the savage, unforgiving wrath of a life’s holocaust.

It was perhaps the darkest point in the entire work.

But my God…the light. The light.

I’ll keep this one short and sweet because (as you may have noticed) I’m late. Again. In fact this entire day has been one long, dry spell of lateness.

But I want to clear the table before tonight’s IMDT show in Project. So here’s the long and the short of it…I really, really wanted to like this one – ‘this’ being One-Shot: Rhapsody in Black and White Dance Sessions. Surely, I thought, if any production could embody the festival’s underlying theme of cultural and spiritual identity, it was this one.

Not quite. Or at least, not quite as well as I might have hoped.

Inspired by the work of Charles ‘Teenie’ Harris (nicknamed One-Shot, hence the title) and focused on ‘the seamless fusion of traditional African dance with contemporary choreography and spoken word’, One-Shot is a fine production. The performers embodied strength, equanimity and elegance as they wheeled and lunged, the syncopation and swing of their fluid yet earthy motions drawing your gaze and attention. And suffusing the entire work, as I experienced it, was what I can only describe as a remarkable…warmth. The dancers, in executing the rhythmic swirl of Brown’s choreography, seemed magnanimous and dignified, the bond between them causing to emanate from the stage a tangible sense of humanity at its most giving. At its best.

And yet…

I couldn’t help feeling a little underwhelmed. This harmony, this comforting presence was something that didn’t quite feel real. It was as if we had been gifted the sense of renewal that comes with catharsis – but without the emotional crisis that delivers it. And as we (or at least, I) hadn’t really earned it, I couldn’t quite surrender to it. And I found it difficult to give myself over to the experience of community as it seemed to be presented here. But then, what makes a sense of identity? Is it just the good we stake our just claim to? Or is it the bittersweet commingling of virtues and vice, triumph and failure? The facing of our treacheries as much as the overcoming of our adversaries?

I don’t know…I’m asking.

There were moments right at the start of the night when a path would open – and then shut again, a path which, if followed, might have led us into that grey zone between black and white, where the ascerbic and saccharine meet. Still, in light of Evidence, A Dance Company’s emphasis on reinforcing community in African American culture, and given that many of the diverse communities of which this culture is collectively an expression continue to suffer from social fragmentation and discrimination, perhaps this is just what’s needed…

Anyway, that’s it. More tomorrow. So be sure to come back.

So for me, last night was passed in the company of Daniel Léveillé Danse, as they performed Amour, acide et noix in the Space Upstairs in Project. Setting itself the challenge of presenting nudity as the only true alternative to the reading of the body, and asking whether the skin is not the one true body costume, the performers (three men and one woman) selected to express Léveille’s vision, took to the stage naked.

Yet however freed they were from the constraints of clothing, this work seemed encumbered by a tense, weighty quality. Duets and solos were burdened by stomp, thud and thump; all motion staccatoed by the eruptive, interruptive standing, marching and gesturing that appeared throughout. None of which need necessarily be bad, if the impulse, vision or concept that led Léveillé to create Amour, acide et noix was something I could engage with. Sadly, I failed to apprehend the ‘outlook on life [taking] refuge behind the strange white skin’ that this show purports to reveal.

A post-show discussion, moderated by Finola Cronin, held out some hope. But talk of nudity accentuating muscular action to the point of conveying an illusion of effort; of jumping as analogous with life; of a stripped body’s workings of organ, sinew and joint as interesting; of the need for a piece’s text to be simple, functional and clean…did nothing to dispel the sense of a concern solely with the exterior. This is not to say the dancers and choreographer are not sincere and daring in their own fashion. Nor is it to suggest there’s no underlying structure or a certain complexity – Léveillé mentioned in passing a quaternary aspect to the work, with four dancers, four sections, four solos, four duets, squares. (Hmmm…maybe I just needed some kinda quintessence to win me over…)

Ultimately, however, there’s the simple fact that I can’t get on board with the starting premise of the skin as ‘the one true body costume’ or of nudity as automatically ‘frank and free of false modesty.’ And I’d also argue any fair consideration of clothing would have to admit that it is something that both veils…and reveals. It’s not all about sparing our blushes.

What we wear, and how, tells of us, tells on us and is one way we stake our claim to this world and to being who we are – or are we to believe these expressions are necessarily untrue or deceitful at all times?

In contrast, the power of the naked form lies in intimating what lies beyond the everyday world and self. It’s a threshold. A threshold between being and non-being, one most of us only approach by either a lover’s bed or a deathbed. Perhaps that’s what last night’s show, in its emotionless rigidity and expressionless heaviness, for me most lacked – an apocalyptic intimacy, and a fragility only born of intimating truths no spoken word can say, but that dance – and dance alone – can hope to express.

But hey. C’mon. Far be it for me to keep you from making your own mind up. Don’t take my word for it. Go, get a ticket, see it.

And feel free to come back here and let me know what you thought…

Okay, so my title is a little misleading.

But during Chrissie Poulter’s great post-show talk with him last night, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui did describe Apocrifu as a show where he is angry…with books. And, as Chrissie drew out Sidi’s ideas on oral and literary traditions, the relativity of perspectives and the multicultural terrain that every individual must negotiate, there was little with which to disagree.

A whole range of other topics were also touched on – the issue of manipulation (whether of oneself or others); the evasion of responsibility; the projection and rejection of roles; the shifting archetypal energies embodied in performance. Any of these would easily exceed the time allowed for last night’s talk – so kudos to Chrissie for covering so much ground. Not bad questions either…particularly Rough Magic’s Tom Creed who, I’m sorry, is the human equivalent of a precision guided missile when it comes to uncovering the creative process behind any production.

But in the end, what Apocrifu (and last night’s post-show with Sidi) most got me thinking of was Plato, who suggests letters don’t give the truth…but only the semblance of truth. People dependent on the written word, he says, though appearing to know it all, generally know nothing. Oh, and they’ll be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.

Admit it. We’ve all met one.

Of course, I suppose if I really wanted to set a cat amongst the pigeons I might ask if you’ve ever met anyone in the Irish dance scene who fits that description? And if you have…do feel free to bare your soul to me at Amour Acide et Noix, tonight in Project.

And hey, trust me. It’ll be held in the strictest confidence.

Okay. I admit it. I’ve been a little tardy when it comes to this year’s festival.

To begin with…I missed the beginning: the festival’s opening night celebration and the perfect opportunity to hang out with Laurie, Ellie, Caroline and the rest of the DDF army and get a feel for what lies ahead.

Okay. My loss. No big deal.

But then…I totally blew it with Bumper 2 Bumper, the festival’s disco with a difference. Possibly the one time I could bust a move without getting arrested by the dance police…and I missed it. And while I’m sure the event was all the better for my absence, I was starting to worry that I’d stumbled into an…uhm…unhelpful pattern of behaviour. I swore I’d try to break it.

Last night, as I found myself racing down O’Connell St to make the inaugural festival performance, it occurred to me that I wasn’t trying hard enough. (This time, I swore harder. Believe me.)

Still, I made it. And what a show. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Apocrifu is a remarkable challenge to the supremacy of the dead letter over the living spirit. The title of the work refers to the apocryphal, that is, something of doubtful authenticity, most often used with reference to those regarded as beyond canonical scripture. Of course, that raises then the question of deciding what is canonical, and what apocryphal…and once decided, what happens next? The extraordinary physicality of the three performers, and the resonating polyphonic singing of Corsican group A Filetta together gave striking testimony to how the moving body and the singing voice both suffer under, yet retain the power to break, the tyranny of text and the burden of the fixed dogma.

Sure, there were a few criticisms after the show (one being a suspicion that it was perhaps a little longer than necessary) but on the whole, those I spoke to were effusive in their praise for the work. Particularly two luminaries of the Irish ballet scene who spoke with delectation of what they felt was as fine an example of a male torso as has ever graced the Abbey’s stage.

One final thought. I suppose the challenge to sacred scripture offered by Apocrifu is as good a place to start as any. But I couldn’t help feeling it a little too obvious. I mean, in the West, we’ve largely broken the back of religious dogmatism – but we can no more stop falling for our own illusions than we can stop breathing. Or do we imagine we don’t have our dogmas? That democracy isn’t a faith? That the scientific method is truth?

So. Get a ticket, if you can. See Apocrifu, if you can. And when you’re done, have a drink, have a think and ask yourself…what are the apocrypha you take as scripture these days?

If you can.