DDF News — 28 Jul 2022
What's On: Dublin Theatre Festival 2022
Dublin Theatre Festival has announced their 2022 programme, and there is so much for dance fans to be excited about! We’ve rounded up some of the shows you won’t want to miss.
How to be a Dancer in Seventy-Two Thousand Easy Lessons by Michael Keegan-Dolan
26 Sept – 8 Oct, The Gate
A story of innocence and experience, sexuality and shame, humiliation and defiance, identity and nationality, endings and ancestry. Written and choreographed by Michael Keegan-Dolan and performed with dancer Rachel Poirier, How To Be A Dancer In Seventy-Two Thousand Easy Lessons presents the profound, accidental, ridiculous banality of lives lived and lives imagined.
Jezebel by Cherish Menzo
3-4 Oct, Project Arts Centre
Jezebel is a dance performance inspired by the Video Vixen: female models who appeared in hip hop video clips in the late 90s and early 00s. Images in the mass media — and in music videos particularly — often projected the female in a hyper-sensualized way. The repetitive images in these videos reinforce stereotypes associated in particular with women of colour.
Jezebel at Dublin Theatre Festival 2022
What We Hold by Jean Butler
5-9 Oct, City Assembly House
Marking acclaimed choreographer Jean Butler’s return to working with traditional Irish dancers. What We Hold is a site-specific work which unfolds as a series of encounters with an intergenerational cast of contemporary and traditional performers set throughout the historic rooms of City Assembly House. What We Hold invites the audience to engage with traditional and contemporary expressions of Irish dance side by side, up close, as never seen before;
to experience what the body holds and what happens when we let go.
The Cold Sings by Junk Ensemble
5-9 Oct, The Depot @ The Complex
The Cold Sings explores themes of female identity and mental health, drawing from Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, her poetry and personal letters. The work captures our struggle with the inner self, our private strengths and societal entrapment through Plath’s personal mythology.
Crowd by Gisèle Vienn
7-8 Oct, O’Reilly Theatre
To the pulsating ebbs and flows of a techno-trance soundtrack, 15 mud-splattered individuals dance with articulate and stylised precision. Ritualistic scenes are slowed down to reveal moments of love, violence, intimacy and aversion amid exhilarating shifts in rhythm and pace.
Drawing on her own experiences in Berlin, Gisèle Vienne expertly harnesses the undulating, stuttering, liquid physicality of the club scene to magnify the interactions of a group of revellers. This trippy slice of life opened Dance Umbrella 2019 and represented a debut at Sadler’s Wells for the French choreographer, director and visual artist.
Crowd at Dublin Theatre Festival 2022
Chalk About by Christine Devaney and Leandro Kees
8-10 Oct, The Ark
Chalk About is a playful, funny and moving look at how we see ourselves and others, featuring dance, chalk, chat and one perfect scene containing everything you could wish for! Turning the stage into a gigantic chalkboard, it explores the nature of identity and asks some BIG questions: What makes us who we are? Is it where we are from? How we talk? Our pasts or our futures? Or is it just the way we dance?
Don’t forget to check out the full programme of Dublin Theatre Festival’s 2022 Edition.