Choreographer Liz Roche introduces Dēmos, a 'tapestry of live music and dance exploring human connection' created in collaboration with Crash Ensemble, premiering as part of Dublin Dance Festival's Winter Edition from 11-13 November.
I think if I could have lived a different life, not in dance, I would have wanted to be first violin in a huge orchestra. I would have liked to stand out every once in a while, and then slip back into the surround of the orchestra and just ride the wave of the sound created by everyone together.
It's just an idea, not based on any knowledge or experience - just a fantasy about a place that I imagined would be dynamic and exciting and a bit edgy to be in.
When myself and the composer David Coonan began making Dēmos in 2019, this was the space that I imagined the piece to be set in – nothing too concrete, but an imagined space that held a large group of people, all playing their part towards a goal of togetherness. I imagined disagreements and misdirections, plenty of individuality and debate, but somehow all mixed in together there would be an eventual state of harmony found. Moving back into my own field, the choreography would focus only on what can happen between moving bodies. Co-operation, disparity, support, rivalry, consensus would all clash in the mix. It would be dance and music together speaking about togetherness and democracy in a world where these concepts or ideas of "truth" were becoming more and more unstable and unattainable.
The piece would not comment or create stories about these things, it would just 'be' them. For me, seeing people commit to something, anything, wholeheartedly is deeply satisfying, and somehow that would be the experience - that would be the performance.
Then Covid-19 struck and there could be no contact between people for over a year. What does this do to a piece about people being together, moving and sweating together, pushing into each other's spaces across dance and music? And then, how can this exist with no audience?
The answer is that it had to change. This live experience about togetherness now had to include separation. And so, we made a suite of 6 short films on the Abbey stage that became Dēmos – films of separation and togetherness, and presented them online at Dublin Dance Festival Summer 2021 Edition. Film brought a new kind of immediacy and intimacy to the work that we didn't expect. We were able to get so close, see behind the setting and underneath the movement. We were able to take a break from the action and follow a performer outside the theatre or see another run to make her cue on stage. This introduction to separation in many ways brought us closer.
Six months later, we are about to present Dēmos at the O'Reilly Theatre Dublin for Dublin Dance Festival Winter 2021 Edition. After everything that has happened in the last 18 months we are all different people - and therefore Dēmos is now different. We are live and onstage with eight exceptional Liz Roche Company dancers performing with three musicians, as well as four more recorded, from the outstanding Crash Ensemble. Still spurred on by David Coonan's score and held in Katie Davenport's set and costumes, Sinead McKenna's lighting and Jose Miguel Jimenez's projections, the performers are finding new pathways to physicalise what it means to be together.
We are now in this moment of possible "post-Covid" where it's not over yet but we can see a way out for once. For a long time we have been planning, changing, adapting, rethinking, reimagining, making it work, going back to the drawing board, and now at last we can be here, present, on stage, with each other and with an audience... in the moment... now. It feels like the first time and we can't wait.
Dēmos is at The Abbey Theatre from 11th - 13th November as part of this year's Dublin Dance Festival - find out more here.
