Deirdre Mulrooney's Diary

The incredibly thought-provoking shows by girl jonah, This Two and She Was a Knife Thrower’s Assistant, moved into Project Cube last weekend. 

During our fascinating conversation for the Dance On The Box video diary, Fiona Wright explained that she and Caroline Bowditch landed on Jonah, who found himself in the belly of a fish for three days, as in the bible tale “Jonah had to be very physically strong.”  Their intimate, and sometimes playful duets featured two very different bodies, often executing the same choreography.

National College of Art and Design Director Colm O’Briain queued to see their world premiere of She Was a Knife Thrower’s Assistant, exploring the notion of danger in all its many and unexpected manifestations in our lives.  Colm didn’t have to think twice about his festival highlight – he was blown away by Colin Dunne’s Out of Time, the work that went into it was “colossal,” and yet it was absolutely entertaining.  

James Kelly of Feenish films, whose series of short films for TG4 The Wren’s Nest was broadcast recently, was also there.  He could well have caught wind of girl jonah’s exciting show on the stairwell, as his office is in the same building as Dublin Dance Festival.

After meeting Caroline Bowditch (from Melbourne), and seeing her wonderful performance - slow, steady, self-assured, and sometimes sassy - it is amazing to think that out on the street, if not overlooked, she is often probably put in a box by passersby. 

They are missing out. 

She is a compelling dancer, with an amazing gift for communication, inviting us to take a close-up look at her “different” body and the way in which she executes the same choreography as her collaborator Fiona Wright, (whose background is in visual and performance art).  This intriguing pair of performers resist the term 'integrated arts’, opting instead for an aesthetic that could perhaps be more akin to ‘interrogative arts’.

Grabbing a bite to eat between shows out on bustling Temple Bar Square, I ran into choreographer/dancer Dylan Quinn, with his partner and their three children, all en route to see Dschungel Wien at The Ark. 

Dylan, who has performed for Liz Roche in Belfast dance company Maiden Voyage works mostly in  Enniskillen, where he is based, and in the UK.  He has been burning up a trail driving up and down from Fermanagh over the last couple of weeks to get his fix of the festival.  

He loved the skill and execution of Ballet Preljocaj, but if he had to pick a highlight, it was being introduced to all the downtown American work that doesn’t normally make it over this side of the Atlantic.  He was keeping to a tight schedule on Saturday, running from girl jonah, to Dschungel Wien, to Philippe Saire out in Dun Laoghaire.  And his little girl was tugging at his sleeve, so I had to let him off.   

Crossing Millenium Bridge, I bumped into Jean Butler, who was en route to catch Mixed Bill 2 of Re-presenting Ireland over at Dance House.  What can I say, Dublin City Centre seemed to be crawling with festival-goers!  She was set to fly back out to New York the next day (Sunday), fully sated by a fantastic Dance Festival. 

There was a full compendium of festival-goers at  Risa Jaroslow’s  provocative Resist/Surrender at O’Reilly Theatre on Friday night, from dance student Olwyn Lyons, who is studying at Leicester’s De Montfort University; to Mairead Vaughan and Dara O’Brien of Shakram Dance, whose short film Frozen will be screened at Project on May 21 – 24; to Jean Butler and Colin Dunne. 

After having the privilege of joining the company in rehearsal (take a look at the Dance On The Box video), it was a delight to see the work, complete with chorus of Dublin men in trench-coats, (and then varying stages of undress) and accompanied by the fantastic Crash Ensemble playing Scott Johnson’s score live. 

Luke Gutgsell led us into the piece with an incredibly agile and arresting solo.  Paul Singh, Gabriel Forestiere and the spectacular Elise Knudson, the only female in a cast of twelve, wrestled and danced out Jaroslow’s themes, which were later amplified by the ‘regular guy’ chorus. 

Computer Worker Jason Mah Ming, and property valuer John Magee, among the others, accomplished their choreographic tasks with aplomb, and were delighted with the experience. 

“It was great, we hardly noticed that the audience was there,” said John afterwards, grinning from ear to ear.

After the post-show discussion, moderated by Philip W Sandstrõm, prolific lighting designer, and new general manager of the Science Gallery at Trinity College, there was no time to lose before dashing down to Temple Bar’s Meeting House Square where the RTÉ Dance on the Box films were set to be screened at 10pm.  

A great crowd assembled, and as well as the films were treated to an exhilarating live performance from the swing-dancing community of Ireland – who were up on the big screen in their swish and moody 1940’s-vibe short film Swing Talking, directed by Anna Rodgers, and choreographed by Lucy Dunne, exploring that age-old theme of  the connection between men and women.

This was a great opportunity to see all four of the Arts Council and RTÉ's specially-commissioned dance films at once.

Together delivered an innovative take on a typical family drama Together, by Ursula Laeubli and Steve Batts.

Unsung saw a meeting between seán-nós and contemporary dance.  Directed  by Morleigh Steinberg and featuring the exquisite dancing talents of seán-nós dancer Nic Gareiss, followed by Liz Roche and dancing to the extraordinary singer Roisín Elsafty.

And my own favourite, Monitor: surveying three outbreaks of dance in unusual places, and shot in luscious high definition, it was an orgy of dance film.  (See our festival diary interview with director Luke McManus, who collaborated with choreographers Katarina Mojzisova, Nick Bryson, and Sascha Perfect to make Monitor). 

Bravo to all involved. 

If you weren't there, or missed them on RTÉ Two, all is not lost – you can still check them out right here on our website until 9 May. 

Saturday night, out at Dún Laoghaire’s Pavilion Theatre, the final festival treat was Philippe Saire’s Could I Just Draw Your Attention to the Brevity of Life?

Exuding a cabaret feel – this rather jazzy show featured magic tricks, minstrels, a glitterball and a final coup de théâtre as a chorus of local children were pulled out of the magic hat.   A very “show-time” piece, it is the third choreography seen in Dublin by the Lausanne-based Saire, whose company has been going since 1986. 

Each creation has been so totally different from the other that it is hard to find a choreographic thread apart from eclecticism itself.  His wonderful, clean 2001 choreography A Question of Distance was inspired by proxemics – the study of space, and the effects of the distance between people, with Dance Theatre of Ireland.  That was followed by the more moving 2004 duet, Lonesome Cowboy, as part of DTI’s Between You and Me programme of duets at Project.

Val Bourne, festival board member, and former director of London’s Dance Umbrella, had flown in from London to savour the last moments of the festival, as had international producer Jeremy Alliger, from Boston, where he was founder/director of the former Boston Dance Umbrella festival.

Cathy O’Kennedy, Lucy Dundon and the indefatigable Dylan Quinn were delighted with Saire’s festival finale.  This time, Laurie Uprichard herself hosted the post-show discussion with Philippe Saire. 

Ever thought about how architecture affects us?  

Moving the audience around, choreographer Tere O’Connor and his team revealed nooks and crannies, as well as magnificent and sometimes bricked-up arches, that had never registered with us before in the former church of SS Michael & John’s.  
Sarah Skaggs (Dances for Airports), there to see her fellow downtown dance artist, commented how “this festival is full of surprises,” when she walked into SS Michael and John’s vaulted space.  

Obediently, Jean Butler, NY dance artist Jodi Melnick (who was ‘dance mentor’ to Jean in does she take sugar?, and choreographed one of Jenny Roche’s solos in Solo³), Colin Dunne, and actor Stephen Rea all carried their chairs around the immense space as instructed by the four amazing dancers.

These were Mathew Rogers, Hilary Clark, Christopher Williams (who almost landed in Jean Butler’s lap in a previous performance of the same show in New York), and Heather Olson (who has been dancing with O’Connor for ten years now).   
In the post-show discussion, one of the dancers mentioned his immense “emotional response,” to the former arches that have been bricked up.  Emotional responses to bygone arches?  Yes – O’Connor and his company are the most architecturally sensitive beings that I have ever come across.  Part of their mission is to invite us to experience anew our own individual responses to space, to walls, to architecture.   

No wonder this piece is called Rammed Earth – a kind of environmentally friendly, age-old building technique, involving earth.  (Together with Slovenian group Betontanc, or “cement dance,” could this be a festival theme emerging?  Or is it just the zeitgeist?)
Well known for being against the “standardisation of human beings,” O’Connor could have been well pleased by last night’s audience, who were a highly eclectic and individualistic bunch.   

He masterminded a choreography that moved New York downtown dance-artists, Irish independent choreographers, contemporary dancers, theatre directors, actors, and the rest of us, four times around the vast, changing space.  Just in case we got lost, there was even a map/seating plan in the programme detailing exactly how each well thought-out configuration should pan out.  

To a certain extent, yes, we were becoming the content of the piece.  But not entirely!  There was no competition between us shuffling our chairs around (though that was fun) and the four dancers who threw themselves against immense walls, peered with feeling into the audience, at times lay prostrate, and, yes, danced, beautifully, in quartets, in a trio that idiosyncratically left out one dancer, and in duets that sometimes grew intense.
Theatre director Jason Byrne was there with his collaborator on Sarah Kane’s play ‘Phaedra’s Love’, choreographer Ella Clarke.  (Ella’s behindtheeyesliesbone is part of the Re-presenting Ireland double bill in DanceHouse.)  

Dancer Megan Kennedy (who I mistook for her identical twin sister, Jessica – easily done!), knew some of Tere’s dancers from her time in New York.  The talented twins’ company Junk Ensemble had just wound up their three-day Dance Festival workshops over at The Ark Cultural Centre for Children.  Megan was there with contemporary dancer Eddie Kay, who has just moved here from London.  

Dance artist Julie Lockett loved the show, and said so in the post-show discussion.  Rebecca Walter and Lian Bell, the designer of Walter’s film Walk Don’t Run, as well as her latest choreography Did I Make You Up?, were delighted by this opportunity to see Tere O’Connor’s legendary work.  

When I say legendary, I mean he has been making dances since 1982, and has created thirty works so far in a constantly growing and developing vision for his company.

He is also Professor of Dance at the University of Illinois, and as we discovered in the post-show discussion, as well as being a groundbreaking choreographer, is a highly articulate advocate for dance, who notably took on the New York dance critics recently.   Refreshing.  (There was also a New York Times critic that Tere approves of in the audience – Roslyn Sulcas.)  
And, as often happens in this town, when he peered into the audience, Tere was pleasantly surprised to see a familiar face, his former college-mate, furniture designer, Susan Zelouf, who now lives in Ireland.  

It was a New York kind of evening in and around the hazy, smoke-filled Project Cube.

At about 6.45pm yesterday, (and the day before), an after-work crowd piled in – hassled, wound-up and stressed – to be enveloped in a cloud-space by Sarah Skaggs’ ethereal and meditative Dance for Airports (yes, inspired by 9/11), to Brian Eno’s hypnotic Music For Airports.  They left about 20 minutes later (including applause), a little more chilled.  Skaggs’ mission was accomplished. 

Earlier yesterday, after recording our RTÉ Dance on the Box video diary interview, New York-based dancer/choreographer Sarah Skaggs pointed out how Laurie Uprichard, with whom she goes back a long time, is being honoured at the prestigious Danspace Project Annual Gala on May 20th,  which modesty prevents her from boasting about.  Or even mentioning.  “She’s a dance guru,” said Skaggs.

Outside in the foyer, there was Mariam Ribon, Artistic Director of Dublin Youth Dance Company, who hadn’t seen Laurie in a long time. 

Was the last time in 1999 when Mariam danced in Sean Curran’s choreography ‘That Place Those People’ for Irish Modern Dance Theatre at Danspace Project in New York’s East Village, of which Uprichard was Executive Director for fifteen years?  “She treated us so well,” whispered Mariam, as we waited to be let in to Project Cube for Sarah Skagg’s “palate-cleansing” solo.

As well as expecting her second baby next month, Mariam is planning the Irish Youth Dance Festival at Dun Laoghaire’s Pavilion Theatre.  I’m sure Sarah Skaggs’ meditative above-the-clouds solo, informed by tai chi, and her time in Bali (among other slowed-down elements), gave Mariam a bubble of at least sixteen minutes to unwind in.  

Ribon was there with Marina Rafter, formerly General Manager of the Dance Festival and now Artistic Director of the Éigse Carlow Festival, which is gearing up for its launch next Tuesday.  Rafter, whose baby is due in July, is seeing as much of the first annual Dublin Dance Festival as commuting from Carlow, and running the festival there, allows her to do. 

Marina used to work for John Scott of Irish Modern Dance Theatre, who was in Project to see Dances for Airports, followed by Rankefod, with plenty of news.  Today (1 May) John can be seen jumping in his gym shorts on Page 27 of The Guardian G2 section.  Yes, that’s right, in his gym shorts.  We can’t bring you the photo, unfortunately, only the interview with Chris Nash – but here’s another great photo by Chris of John, this time with more clothes on. Renowned photographer Chris Nash selected it as his ‘Best Shot’, capturing how “in person he’s very self-conscious, but on stage he has this wild abandon.”

Not a bad start to the month, which promises to be an exciting airport month for Scott, who will jet off to display some of that wild abandon among a host of dancing legends in one of New York’s most edgy performance spaces, La Mama, not once, but twice. 

On May 22nd he’ll be performing extracts from his Bowing Dance alongside legendary  Judson Church artist Meredith Monk (catch an interview with Meredith & Bjork) and others in a benefit gig for La Mama Moves Dance Festival, in honour of Dance Activist and Philanthropist Micki Wesson. 

More recently, John got a call from another legendary New York choreographer, Sarah Rudner, to perform again in La Mama on 25 May in Dancing on View, a new version of This Dancing Life which she choreographed for his company last year. 

Tonight (Thursday), John’ll be at the first night of Risa Jaroslow’s Resist/Surrender at O’Reilly Theatre, to see how the chorus of Dublin non-dancer men, which he helped Jaroslow to cast, fares in her exploration of masculinity. 

But, getting back to Sarah Skaggs, the delightful soloist also succeeded in luring out Davide Terlingo (Head of Dance at the Arts Council) after a hard day at the office (very happy with the RTÉ Dance on the Box films, which were co-funded by the Council), as well as Loughlin Deegan, Director of Dublin Theatre Festival.

“Extraordinary,” was the first word to pop out of Phelim Donlon’s mouth after Kitt Johnson’s staggering solo celebrating evolution, Rankefod at Project Space Upstairs last night. 

In fact it was the first word out of most of our mouths.  We’d never set eyes on anything like Johnson’s strange, but profoundly natural, minute movement before.   Forensically anthropological, it was like watching an insect in a jar – or some kind of awesome scientific specimen in its private moments.  All that was missing was David Bellamy.

With her long, rope-like blonde plait, (bound together with special mud from Africa)  curling down her naked back, vertebra by vertebra, Johnson was a weird and marvellous creature, of the ilk you might find inhabiting Middle Earth.   This performer is simply a phenomenon.

Wearing just a loin-cloth, Kitt Johnson’s magical creature would be great for kids learning about the big bang theory, evolution, and how our planet and its human inhabitants came into being. 

Dance critics Seona MacReamoinn and Michael Seaver were also utterly fascinated by this Danish creature.   Still in the afterglow of Ballet Preljocaj, which she adored, Jenny Traynor, general manager of CoisCéim (who has been at just about everything so far), was also awestruck by Rankefod.

After casting her spell on us, Kitt Johnson told me at the reception afterwards that ‘rankefod’ (“a very poetic word in Danish”), means ‘cirripidia’ (she kindly wrote it in my notebook).  In commonspeak that translates to ‘barnacle’. 

Charles Darwin, originator of the theory of evolution (just in case you forgot), wrote extensively on cirripedia between 1846 and 1854, as they were the crucial link that helped  him crack his theory.

Sarah Skaggs, whose solo Dances for Airports is on in downstairs in Project Cube was chatting to Festival Director Laurie Uprichard and Johnson at the reception.  Kitt would love to see Sarah’s show, which starts at 7pm, but she has to start putting the African mud in her hair at 7.05pm to be ready for her own 8pm start time. 

Johnson told me that she grew up in the countryside, feels very close to nature, and, yes, she studies animals very, very closely.  Think Dian Fossey  (Gorillas in the Mist), trying to trick her silver-back gorillas into believing she was one of them by studied imitation, in order to gain their trust. 

Most of the time, with her sublime body-control, born maybe of her background in elite sports (the 800-metre run was her thing), Johnson resembled some kind of larval mutant creature with legs and arms in all the wrong places, the type you might find in a sci-fi movie.  Sometimes she was an insect about to sprout wings, sometimes a gnat, sometimes the first amoeba struggling into life.

As well as athletics, Johnson’s background is in modern and new dance, contact improvisation (she teaches this at a circus school in Denmark), martial arts and the Japanese art form Butoh, also known as ‘Dance of Darkness’. Think German expressionist performer Valeska Gert, and the kind of primal and primitive energy yearned for by Antonin Artaud (French founder of ‘theatre of cruelty’).

Sometimes it felt like watching animated scientific drawings of all the evolutionary stages that led to us, the mighty bipeds.  Think the Galapagos Islands. 

Apart from Butoh artists, the only performer I have seen who is remotely in the same family, like Johnson’s strange and kinky Bulgarian cousin perhaps, is Ivo Dimchev.  Another “phenomenon”, the creature-like performance artist Dimchev, performed his weird and captivating solo Lili Handel, in Project Cube in the Have U Met Nosti festival last summer.

In the meantime, on Facebook, theatre director Tom Creed boasted that on ‘International Dance Day’ (yesterday, April 29th), he "went to see something with ballet in the title".  He can only be referring to Ballet Preljocaj at O’Reilly Theatre, where John Scott hosted the post-show discussion last night. 

Brian Hogan, bass player with Kila, was at O’Reilly Theatre for the Irish premiere of Ballet Preljocaj’s Empty Moves [parts I & II], last night with his partner, elegant contemporary dancer Justine Doswell. 

Hogan was fascinated to see does she take sugar? at Project Space Upstairs beforehand, especially as Kila toured Japan with Jean Butler as guest dancer in 2006. 

Justine loved Ballet Preljocaj, remarking on ‘the triplets’ (a complicated contemporary dance move).  The hardcore dance cognoscenti in the auditorium smiled with recognition at that move, which to them was a pointed homage to Merce Cunningham, one of the most important figures in American Contemporary Dance. 

The rest of us were simply in awe, admiring the precision-manoeuvres by Preljocaj’s four amazing dancers, and the genuine and inexorable build-up to exhaustion as the show neared its end, one hour later.   Dancing themselves out, this agile quartet held nothing back, burning up their energy with seeming reckless abandon. 

Busy theatre impressario Michael Scott, director of Jerry Hall and David Soul in Love Letters, currently running at the Tivoli Theatre, was sitting beside me.  He has been a fan of French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj “one of the best choreographer’s in the world,” for a long time, and was thrilled with the opportunity to savour his choreography in Dublin. 

Contemporary Dancer Katherine O’Malley, who performed in Liz Roche’s Untitled choreography, as well as her “solo” for Jenny Roche was there on a rare night off lapping up the precision movement too.  And choreographer Cathy O’Kennedy drove up from Kildare after her weekend of performances with Counterbalance dance company. 

Independent choreographer and dancer Fearghus Ó’Conchúir (and one of the talents behind the 2006 RTÉ Dance on the Box film Match), who wore red in Rebecca Walter’s quirky film Walk Don’t Run, was thrilled to see the dancers in full flight.   He has been giving daily dance class to the the Ballet Preljocaj dancers at DanceHouse since they arrived. 

Rob Dias, who danced in Dance Theatre of Ireland’s festival show, Block Party, was also absorbing the abstract, flowing masterpiece, on a night off.  

I was chatting to Ballet Preljocaj dancer Sergio Diaz afterwards, and he confirmed my hunch that the piece is dictated by the connection between them, in electron-like fashion. Yes, it smacked of Merce Cunningham’s purely mathematical precision, but with the added ingredient of connectivity between the dancers – like when each girl climbed on top of a prostrate male dancer (respectively), and proceeded to shove an elbow in their eyes.  Hmm.  Unusual! 

At points they did slip out of the pure angular, and abstract movement sequences to poke each other with their index fingers on the chest, for example.  Mathematical, but sexy. 

I loved Preljocaj’s use of John Cage’s 1977 sound score Empty Words, in which Cage shook the literal meaning out of Henry David Thoreau’s writing as he read it aloud, and somewhat nonsensically, to a boisterous Milanese audience. 

(Jean Butler also uses an excerpt of Cage’s wonderful Roaratorio – an Irish Circus, featuring fiddler Paddy Glackin and Dublin traffic sounds, in does she take sugar?)

Incidentally, I myself had the good fortune to bump into John Cage, in Paris at a revival of the Fluxus movement, shortly before he died in 1992 – and in a suitably random fashion. 

When, as part of an internship for Paris Passion magazine, I was given the great responsibility of dropping an RSVP to a left-bank gallery, none other than John Cage answered the gallery door.  He ushered me in, like a trusted friend, to land me in the middle of Yoko Ono performing her famous Ceiling Painting installation (through which she met John Lennon), for a TV camera. 

Not a bad personal introduction to Cage’s random world of “chance operations”. 

It was no crying game for director Neil Jordan and actor Stephen Rea at Jean Butler’s intimate show does she take sugar?, in the jam-packed Project Space Upstairs on Sunday evening. 

Along with singer Sinéad O’Connor (who Neil directed so brilliantly as the BVM in The Butcher Boy – remember?), that esteemed trinity really enjoyed Jean’s take on her journey as a dancer – including her own twist on the Bumper to Bumper silent disco phenomenon, when, in one section she danced to music only she could hear on her iPod.

Among hundreds of others availing of the opportunity to see Butler’s legendary dancing up close were the extraordinary actress Olwen Fouéré; dancer, choreographer, and member of Aosdána, Cindy Cummings; theatre director Tom Creed (still on his season ticket), and dancer Breándán de Gallaí.

Jean’s mother was delighted to see the show again after flying in from New York that day.  Speaking of New York, it was great to see footage of New York, where Jean and her husband Cuan Hanley are based now, projected behind her.  She describes this soul-bearing solo, as a “postcard” of where she is at right now – a good as well as terribly interesting place indeed.   

I was looking out for Jerry Hall, who attended the swish reception for the Dance Festival at US Ambassador Thomas C Foley’s Residence in the Phoenix Park earlier that day, thinking that she might have popped in on her way to her own performance, Love Letters, at the Tivoli Theatre.  She could have been there, but I didn’t see her. 

In the same space the previous night, the broad-ranging audience at Colin Dunne’s outstanding solo Out of Time lept to their feet in the first standing ovation of the festival.

Yang to Jean’s Yin, perhaps, Dunne’s autobiographically-inspired show began with the playful opening gambit: “Wanna see my hornpipe?”  

“Yes!” came one fan’s enthusiastic reply, out of the packed auditorium.

He also let us in to some trade secrets.  Ever wonder what is really going through the heads of Irish dancers as they hop and pound it out on the stage?  Rashers and sausages. That’s the mantra that keeps them in perfect 6/8 time.  Try it at home – you’ll see!

In this ground-breaking piece, with the help of director Sinéad Rushe, and sound designer Fionán de Barra, Dunne took his percussive genius to new places.  Placing microphones in his shoes, he played with the reverb, letting swooshing, and sometimes other-worldly sounds emerge from his hard-shoe taps.

Rich, multi-layered, and meticulously worked-through, Out of Time is the fruit of a long journey, from a youngster being feted as world-record breaker on Blue Peter at the age of ten (footage that is part of the show); to taking on the lead role in Riverdance, to his more reflective self today.  But it’s not without that crucial ingredient – humour. 

As well as the fans, people who have played a part in his journey were present.  Colin’s sisters, Geraldine and Caroline, who were sent to Irish dancing class with their younger brother as small children, had flown in from Birmingham, as did his longtime manager Ian Allen, with his wife Sarah.  They were floored by Colin’s show. 

Jean Butler, Colin’s former dancing partner and collaborator, and her husband designer Cuan Hanly, were both moved by Colin’s powerful solo. 

Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre’s Michael Keegan-Dolan, who directed Dunne sending himself up as a tacky Irish dancing star in The Bull, (for which Dunne was nominated for a UK Critic’s Circle National Dance Award), dropped in to see Colin delving way deeper into that role, on Sunday night.  

Dunne partly tried to make sense of it all by simply dancing in time with wonderful black and white archive footage - getting into the 1935 groove of sprightly dancing spadesmiths Willie, Jack, Peter, and Jim Hayes; of Áine ni Thuathaigh’s 1955 svelte slip-jig, and of the wonderful Paddy Bán O’Broin, enjoying a jig in 1972.

Earlier in the afternoon I got to bring my ine year-old niece Sophie to The Ark, Cultural Centre for Children, to see David Middendorp’s quirky Dreamsketch/Dustbuster/Bread-Peace.  She thought it was brilliant. 

At the end of the Roger Rabbit-style show, the children were shown how to do their own special effects in front of a blue or green-screen (“just paint a sheet!”), and how to control their parents by remote-control when they got home. 

Jessica Kennedy, of Junk Ensemble, was sitting beside us in the cute little auditorium, and is set to give workshops for kids there next week with her identical twin sister Megan. 

Actor Louis Lovett – better known to many as Dieter Langer in TV series Killnaskully – was also enjoying the renowned Dutch company.  Louis is a regular performer at The Ark, for his own Theatre Lovett, children’s theatre company.

Louis’ wife Muireann Ahern, Creative Arts programmer at the Ark, who co-programmed Dublin Dance Festival’s children’s season was busy running workshops upstairs.

I then legged it down to Project Cube to catch Rebecca Walter’s off-beat and somewhat anarchistic take on the Dame Street/George’s Street intersection in her film Walk Don’t Run, co-directed by Mark Linnane, for Catapult Dance.

After this original interventionist take on ‘dancing at the crossroads’ - with four red, orange, and green-clad dancers dashing out to the middle of the road and dancing in the fifteen-second intervals when the lights were red, that busy thoroughfare will never look the same to me again.

In true candid camera/cinema vérité style, two gardaí hilariously interrupted Wolfgang Hoffman, director of Dublin Fringe Festival as he rolled across Dame Street on his side, requesting that he stand up and move off. Wisely, he obeyed.

Music journalist, Joe Jackson (presenter of Under the Influence on RTÉ Radio One), declared himself ‘enthralled’ by Reykjavik Dance’s Hundaheppni (A Stroke of Luck) on Friday night in the ever-magnificent space of SS Michael and John’s with its long, atmospheric stain-glass windows.

It reminds him “how visceral, poetic, truly moving and beautiful theatre can be, especially when it's also powered by dance.”  He was even inspired to search out the singer, Kristjana Stefánsdóttir afterwards to congratulate her on her wonderful performance.

Stefánsdóttir, who held the audience in the palm of her hand, getting us to play a game involving closing our eyes at her bidding, delivered moody renditions of The Girl from Ipanema. 

Hilariously, after a couple of particularly tortured solos from self-conscious and insecure party-girls interpreted by Lovísa Ósk Gunnarsdóttir (don’t you love those Icelandic surnames?), and Halla Ólafsdóttir, Stefánsdóttir turned Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Want to have Fun ironic.  It was the music/dance juxtaposition that did it. 

Portraying the ‘inner struggle’ around ‘maintaining the right image’, the three fair-haired Icelandic dancers toyed expertly with their Irish audience. 

At the outset, Gunnarsdóttir and Ólafsdóttir glammed themselves up for an excruciating dinner for two.  Like a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, one eventually poured plates of food and drink over the other’s head.  Eventually appearances shattered as they alternately broke into eloquent writhing solos of angst and discomfort. 

Brilliant!  Well, that’s what I thought. 

The reaction from the distinguished dance audience present – including the legendary Joan Davis (founder of Dublin Contemporary Dance Theatre in 1978); Mary Nunan of University of Limerick and the Arts Council; independent choreographer Julie Lockett, and dancer Jen Fleenor (who toured the US with CoisCéim in Knots recently), was very mixed. 

(Julie and Jen are going to see ‘everything’, and like Jenny Roche’s solos the best so far). 

Val Bourne CBE, who until recently ran Dance Umbrella in London, and was a founding force behind Dublin Dance Festival had flown in for the weekend from London, and plans to get back for the final weekend of the festival too.   Phelim Donlon, one of the longest-serving officers on the Arts Council, was also in the high-ceilinged performance space to savour the cool Icelandic dance, after seeing Jean Butler’s show across the road in Project. 

Earlier in the afternoon, I caught the first showing of Re-Presenting Ireland’s Mixed Bill over at DanceHouse.  Theatre Director Jason Byrne dropped in to see Ella Clarke’s interesting choreography Behindtheeyesliebone for her Myriad Dance Company, which had premiered in the 2006 Fringe Festival. 

Featuring the promising talents of Jessica Kennedy (of Junk Ensemble, with her identical twin sister and dancer Megan Kennedy), Áine Stapleton, and Shelly Hering, it was a delightfully quirky, soft piece of choreography. 

Ella told me on the DanceHouse deck later that ‘love’ is the theme that seems to be emerging for her professionally this year.  Indeed, she has just choreographed Jason Byrne’s production of Romeo and Juliet at the Abbey Theatre, and will embark on Sarah Kane’s play Phaedra’s Love for his company Loose Canon shortly.  Additionally, Clarke, also a dancer, is set to contribute choreography to her long-term collaborator Selina Cartmell’s production of Big Love by Charles Mee at the Peacock Theatre in July. 

Another theatre director known for mushing the boundaries between dance and theatre in his work, Gavin Quinn, of Pan Pan Theatre company was in DanceHouse too.

Liz Roche’s free-flowing Untitled choreography, which herself and Katherine O’Malley unravelled in silence, was another outstanding contribution to the Mixed Bill.

Mary Wycherley and Jürgen Simpson’s Receiving Systems; and Shakram Dance Company’s ongoing development of their ethnic-inspired aesthetic, Being Nowhere, was noteworthy too, agreed Ashtanga Yoga teacher Paul Clancy, (he teaches at DanceHouse, as well as at other venues around the city).

Eugene Downes of Culture Ireland was there, catching up on the latest representations of Ireland in Contemporary Dance in our wonderful state-of-the art performance space.  But that’s just bricks and mortar.  More importantly, Director of DanceHouse Paul Johnson could be proud to see the building fulfilling its promise.

The great and the good of the dance world convened at Project Theatre’s Space Upstairs last night to see Jenny Roche,the festival’s Artist in Residence, in Solo³ three extraordinary solos by John Jasperse, Jodi Melnick, and Liz Roche.

Among the throng, tingling with anticipation: Cindy Cummings, one of two dance artists elected to Aosdána; Olive Braiden, Chair of the Arts Council; Breandán de Gallaí, just back from America, and the mighty John Scott of Irish Modern Dance Theatre. 

Jenny, also the Arts Council’s Dance Adviser, commissioned the three choreographers to create solo choreographies for her as part of her PhD research at the University of Surrey.

It was fascinating to have a window into her exploration of “the shift in personality” involved in absorbing three different movement vocabularies simultaneously.

In the post-show discussion, moderated by Finola Cronin,  Jenny, who started in ballet at a very young age, let us in on the ballet world of weekly weigh-ins, and insecurity around appearances that still haunts her when she goes to do a pirouette.

“I go psychologically weird when I do a pirouette,” she confided. 

She did several tongue-in-cheek pirouettes in John Jasperse’s often funny ’Solo for Jenny: Dance of (an undisclosed number) of veils’.

Afterwards in Project Bar, at the post-show reception, former dancer Finola Cronin commented to Dermot McLaughlin, Chair of the Dance Festival, on how empowering it is for a dancer to be able to commission choreographers to create a solo – purely to analyse how it feels in their body.   It’s the opposite of how that dynamic usually works.

Catherine Nunes, former director, and founder of the festival, and Marina Rafter, the festival’s previous general manager (now director of Éigse Carlow Arts Festival), were also there to see the fruits of a project they set in motion, when they selected Jenny Roche to be the Festival’s Artist in Residence. 

Jean Butler, who was sitting beside me with visiting New Yorker Juliette Mapp, couldn’t stick around for the post-show discussion.  Jean’s show 'does she take sugar?' opens tonight (Friday) at 6pm, also in Project, and she needed to catch some Z’s.   

Choreographer, dancer, and teacher Mapp, who is over on a movement research exchange at DanceHouse, where she is teaching class, has recently premiered ‘Rain Early, Skies Clear’ in Danspace at St Mark’s Church, the venue in New York that Laurie Uprichard ran until she came to Dublin. 

Mapp used to dance with John Jasperse, who was there busy catching up on all the latest international dance-world gossip with Betsy Gregory, another New Yorker, who runs the prestigious international Dance Umbrella festival in London.

Uprichard was touched to see her two dance universes – Dublin and New York, come together in such a creative way in one evening. 

I chatted to Liz Roche, of Rex Levitates Dance Company, who choreographed ‘Shared Material on Dying’ for her sister Jenny – the third in the evening’s trilogy of solos. 

It was a solo with a twist as, in the shadows, Liz and dancer Katherine O’Malley kept Jenny company, echoing her movement, and occasionally interjecting verbally, or audibly exhaling.  These sounds were heightened as, danced in men’s suits and camisole tops, the choreography took place in silence.

‘Unsung’, Liz’s collaboration with Michael O’Suilleabhain and Morleigh Steinberg, the contemporary-dance-meets-sean-nós RTÉ Dance on the Box film, will be screened on RTÉ Two next week. 

Roche plans to expand on the project for Éigse Carlow Arts Festival in June, and is dancing with Katherine O’Malley this afternoon and Saturday in ‘Re-presenting Ireland’, at Dance House, in a choreography inspired by Jackson Pollack.  Busy women!

Speaking of busy dance-artists, choreographer Cathy O’Kennedy, who loved ‘Wrestling Dostoievsky’ (see my last diary below), shared that she is looking forward to seeing “everything” in the festival, including UK integrated dance Company ‘Girl Jonah’ next week.

But she will have to forfeit seeing this weekend’s shows, as her own integrated dance group ‘Counterbalance’, which grew out of a workshop with the amazing British Candoco Dance Company comprising able and disable-bodied dancers many years ago, will be performing ‘Pieces of Elsewhere’ in Kildare.

The quayside former church of SS Michael and John’s was looking rather majestic for Slovenian dance company Betontanc’s powerful show Wrestling Dostoievsky last night.  Its large, elegant space was dotted with lamps clothed like mannequins in dresses, around a cosy dance floor of four Persian rugs.

Among many other curious folk, around the edges of the performance space, I spotted Loughlin Deegan of Dublin Theatre Festival; Director of NCAD Colm O’Briain, Duncan Keegan of Dance Ireland, (who pens their newsletter), dancer and choreographer Olwen Grindley – the festival’s Artist Liaison officer, and Joanna Banks, Artistic Director of the College of Dance in Monkstown.

Performer Branko Jordan first took the stage, reminded us that it was Tuesday, April 22nd (among other things), and asked us to kindly switch our lamps off. 

Before our eyes, the six performers each began to wrestle a character from Crime and Punishment, Dostoievsky’s challenging philosophical masterpiece, in which destitute student Raskolnikov murders a pawnbroker and is notoriously unrepentant for his crime.  (If you haven’t read it lately, you might have seen Woody Allen’s 2005 film Match Point which is loosely based on the 1866 Russian novel).

Raskolnikov was wrestled into being by the intense and rather special Primož Bezjak.  Andreja Kopač who, as well as being a breathtaking dancer, is also a journalist, post-graduate student of linguistics, and, she told me later, into writing about art, wrestled Polja.  The gamey Svidrigailov was taken on by Branko Potočan.  

The wrestling-drama, as you might expect, was intense, often veering towards the downright raunchy.  There was an axe, a black cape, and some rather wonderful group choreography.  But Wrestling Dostoievsky was not without the occasional light touch ­ like when a black hat was passed around (they eyeballed you until you put change into it), or, at the outset, when the performers ­ attired in negligees and suits - offered every audience member a real, edible biscuit.

But the interaction didn’t stop there.  I leaned forward to get a good look as Ena Kovačević (wrestling Dunja) took director and lighting designer John Comiskey by the hand out of the audience.  John gallantly acquiesced to an on-stage slow dance with the somewhat forward Slovenian. 

Once we had our fill of gawking at this amazing intercultural dialogue, the rest of us remembered to stare intensely at our shoes in case we would be next. But, right at home, the tall John Comiskey seemed to enjoy it, sharing pleasantries with the short dark-haired Slovenian dancer, oblivious to the fact that he too now had an audience. Kovačević chose well!

Betontanc (which means Concrete Dance) didn’t shirk the heavy philosophy either. 

“Now you have finally done something ­ how does it feel?” demanded Daša Doberšek (wrestling love-interest, Sonja) after Raskolnikov’s defiant declaration “I killed the old lady”. 

What a brave, immediate, and serious bunch Betontanc Dance Company (going since 1995), are. 

Wife of the Slovenian Ambassador to Ireland Amalija Jelen Mikša was so moved by the real-time intensity of her compatriots’ performances, that searching for academic connections with Dostoevsky’s great tome hardly entered into the equation.   “I just looked at them, as they are, in front of me”, she said, in awe.

Indeed, part of Betontanc’s manifesto, spelt out in the programme note, is to plumb “existence and possibility” as opposed to getting stuck in theory and the past.

Speaking of existence, and possibility, the Slovenian Ambassador to Ireland, Franc Miksa, generously invited us all to a post-show reception of delicious Slovenian wine - Miro Mundo's Sipon and Kog 3 - which originated near Ormož, his own home town.  Imported by Westport Wine Merchant Liam Cabot, who with his wife Sinéad have purchased a hobby vineyard in Slovenia, Mr. Miksa informed me with no small delight that as a result he is now cultivating a potential twinning between Westport and Ormož, starting with an imminent school exchange programme. Na zdravje!

A few fish hung out nonchalantly in a cute little aquarium suspended above Project Theatre Space Upstairs last night, oblivious to the fact that the auditorium was bristling, full to capacity for Prague-based dance group Nanohach’s ‘Portrait’ –  the theatre’s first show in the 2008 Dublin Dance Festival. 

“Dance!  Dance!,” intoned two dancing girls, swinging in and out of Martha Schwartz’s leaning flourescent red light sticks, in the rain.  They were shouting over DJ Sinéad Ní Mórdha’s clandestine beats, as they echoed around their headphones. 

“It’s particularly good when you take the headphones off, and look around you at everybody dancing,” shouted another.  But wasn’t it a little cold, and wet?  “You just get in the crowd, and get dancing, and soon you warm up!” enthused another, amazed that I even had to ask. 

New York fitness legend Pall Gale was among the wet but happy crowd for the Bumper To Bumper silent disco on Saturday  with his rain-jacket on, and pen-radio (which he bought for €2), throwing exuberant shapes around Grand Canal Square. 

He had never experienced anything like it, and was dying to tell his New York DJ pals about the hot (not weatherwise), European ‘silent disco’ phenomenon.

I had been attempting the ‘Flamenco Step’ in Pall’s famous step-aerobic class earlier that morning at Jackie Skelly Fitness studio. 

Now when I say famous, I mean Nicole Kidman’s PA rang him mid-conversation to book a place for Nicole (“She is really strong, and has great skin”), next Wednesday at New York’s Chelsea Piers fitness club.

Pall’s alumni include the likes of Sigourney Weaver (before ‘Aliens’ came out – she gave Pall a heads-up: “it’s a little dark”),  Kate Winslet, Marisa Tomei, and, basically, a who’s who list of Hollywood. 

But Pall doesn’t take much notice of the gitterati, as in his class, he is the only star. 

Laurie Uprichard, Director of Dublin Dance Festival, who has been a fan since 1999, was at the top of the class in Jackie Skelly’s in her black bandana and work-out gear.  “I love the way he incorporates dance moves into the work-out routine,” she enthused. 

Cha cha cha, samba, Flamenco, you name it, it certainly eliminates the boredom factor from working out.  Not to mention his meticulously researched music line-up, with all the latest releases he is plugged in to courtesy of his New York DJ buddies.

A lot of the hardcore dancers at Grand Canal Square were devoted fans of DJ’s Jim Carroll and Sinéad, who were alternating sets every fifteen minutes at the altar of spin. About five hundred turned out to jump around to to the likes of pop-punk band Sultans of Ping’s anthem ‘Where’s Me Jumper?’, which inspired the title.

Hoods up, hats on, woolly scarves wound around their necks, girls from Barcelona and Northern Spain were carrying old-style transistor-radios like handbags, careful not to break the ‘silent’ rules by having their earphones dutifully plugged in.  They had been to a similar event at Glastonbury, so knew about the hottest de rigueur style accessories. 

“This is fantastic!  I’d be here every Friday night, if it was on,” offered some young and trendy Grand Canal Square inhabitants.

Speaking of the neighbours, at least they can’t complain about the loud music.  The Silent Headphone disco felt like the kind of thing you might get up to while your parents were asleep upstairs. 

While most silent disco neophytes grooved around oblivious to the rain with discreet earphones plugged in to their mobile phones, others let it all hang out with totally flamboyant massive retro headphones – bulging under their hoodies.

It felt like being at the birth of a brand new trend – brazenly battling it out with the elements to shake some tacky.  There was something defiant about this democratic (it was free) rain-dance. 

Even hailstones wouldn’t have deterred this bunch who ranged from twenty-something to sixty-something in age.  Though about eighty per cent were in the former category, one long grey-haired dancer shouted gleefully “it’s An Óige!” when I struck up a conversation with him.  

Having brought Bumper to Bumper to Dublin Dance Festival, general manager Sandra Adams had every reason to be delighted with the vibe, and the turn-out.

William Forsythe and his company took the Abbey stage by storm in Dublin Dance Festival’s mind-blowing opening show. 

Actor Tom Hickey, John Kelly of The View, and Anica Louwe (who’s just run Longford Dance Festival) were amongst the festival-goers who were left awestruck by Forsythe’s anti-war masterpiece ‘Three Atmospheric Studies’.

It was superb, it was intense, and of course there was no resolution.  The audience was bristling with anticipation at the outset, and bowled over at the end.

Forsythe’s invitation-only dress rehearsal the night before turned into a buzzing arts party, attended by the likes of Colin Dunne.  Colin was all set to bring his show ‘Out of Time’ to Madrid the next day but he didn’t want to miss the opportunity to see Forsythe’s troupe in action. 

The dance glitterati were out in force.  David Gordon (who’s giving a workshop at DanceHouse), choreographer Finola Cronin, former dancer with Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal and Robert Connor & Loretta Yurick of Dance Theatre of Ireland, who will present ‘Block Party’ at Grand Canal Square.

And of course Festival Director Laurie Uprichard was there, grinning delightedly from ear to ear.

Jenny Roche came from rehearsals for her show ‘Solo3’ at Project – with sister Liz Roche, choreographer and lead dancer of the RTÉ Dance On The Box film Unsung.

Also sighted among the dance fans were Davide Terlingo, Head of Dance at the Arts Council, Project Director Willie White, Dance Festival Chair Dermot McLaughlin, composer Donnacha Dennehy (who’s working with Risa Jaroslow on Resist/Surrender), Gaiety School of Acting’s Pat Sutton and Dublin Theatre Festival Director Loughlin Deegan.

So was I! 

The dress rehearsal was an incredible opportunity to watch William Forsythe at work.  Very generous and unassuming, he introduced himself as ‘Bill’ after the show, and asked us if we had any questions.  We didn’t – much too gob-smacked by what we’d seen onstage.

However, the dress rehearsal was just a teaser for the opening night, as, along with all the technical tweaking, the company could only present two of the ‘Three Atmospheric Studies’ sections on Wednesday.  And dancer David Kern had a cold and had to save his voice for the premiere.  We were left wanting more.  And we certainly got it at Thursday night’s opening.

Forsythe’s answer to Picasso’s Guernica will be embedded somewhere in our unconscious for quite a while to come, I reckon.

It’s no wonder to hear that Forsythe was visiting www.iraqbodycount.org regularly during his creation process.  It takes genius to translate that into a choreography that connects with an audience that can be pretty numbed-out by relentless reportage of the war.

Forsythe moved our brains around a massive, complex, and multi-layered tragedy by focusing in on the fact that when peeled back to its essence the catastrophe is, at heart, that of ‘Some Mother’s Son’. 

The extraordinary Jone San Martin (who I was chatting to the night before – she’s from San Sebastian), drew us in to the eye of this desert storm as ‘universal mother’, in an ill-fitting short pink dress. 

Forsythe took his inspiration from Mary’s plight in Lucas Cranach the Elder’s 16^th century painting The Crucifixion.  A huge reproduction of the picture was hanging in the Abbey foyer, along with a Reuters photograph of an Iraqi boy in a body-bag.  

A brilliantly officious Amancio Gonzalez (boy, these dancers can act) and an extraordinary, warped Condoleeza Rice–type character who placated the bereaved mother in technically enhanced Texan tones with platitudes like ‘Just calm down ma’am.  We have come to liberate you for freedom’ pointed up the injustice.

Now that could be simple and straightforward, were it not for Forsythe embedding the tale in his own special distracting brand of knotty and convulsive choreographic chaos and intricate layering, spread over his stunning cast of seventeen. 

You could hear actual gasps around the auditorium, people stunned by this “Guernica in motion”.   

You can catch two more performances of Forsythe’s Three Atmospheric Studies – tonight at eight and a matinee tomorrow afternoon. 

And don’t miss this chance of engaging with one of the most intriguing intellects of our time – live – in his post-show discussion tonight.