Civic Theatre, Tallaght
Now here's a welcome antidote to all that dreary scab-picking, Black Swanneurosis. In Quixoteland, the National Dance Company of Wales celebrates the conventions of the 19th-century ballet, Don Quixote, even if the plotline is pulled completely inside out.
Spanish choreographer Gustavo Ramirez Sansano retains Léon Minkus’s expressive score, plenty of set-pieces with bustling villagers and the comforting familiarity of a love duet that conquers all. But there’s no Don Quixote. He’s long dead and the Cervantes novel of his life has replaced the Bible as the village’s moral touchstone.
It’s a bleak monochrome world with grey costumes, bleak white lighting and a steel set dominated by a mechanical windmill and nine huge rods, perhaps symbolic of Cupid’s misfired arrows. Two star-struck lovers – this time shot with unerring accuracy by Cupid – are punished for showing true love and contravening the ideals of the villagers’ good book. It’s frothy feel-good stuff and the audience gets swept along in a slipstream of fast-paced action as the dancers joyously ham up Sanano’s characters and narrative.
Stephen Petronio's works are rare visitors to Ireland. In By Singing Light, the New York choreographer draws on Dylan Thomas's poetry and the Welsh choral tradition for inspiration. The choice may seem obvious, but there's not a whiff of conceptual laziness in the finished product, a restive tour de force that is full of both cerebral and visceral thrill.
Eleven dancers sometimes produce slowing morphing sculptural shapes, at other times ever-changing sequences of breathless trios or quartets in unison or canon. The choreography is compulsive in its unpredictability and constantly driven by Son Lux’s epic soundscore, with its full- throated choir, moody electronics and jubilant bells. As in Petronio’s finale, the Dance Company of Wales has hit a comfortable groove, producing impressive choreography that is performed with precision and commitment by a cast of young dancers.
– At Siamsa Tire, Tralee tonight and Cork Opera House on Sunday
