Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre are rehearsing their new dance work, The Flowerbed, and choreographer and founder, Michael Keegan-Dolan is perched on his heels watching three of his dancers go through their paces. Suddenly he stops. Gesturing towards the other three dancers, while gently stretching at the side of the practice area, he asks worriedly: "Where are all of you? Oh, you're in the supermarket, thank God for that."
It's typical of the innovative way Keegan-Dolan is tackling dance. As anyone who saw the company's previous award-winning performances such as Sun- day Lunch and The Good People, will know, Fabulous Beast are not about dancers throwing pretty shapes in leotards. They're stories of people who think they're Elvis, people who fall in love and have arguments, people who go to the supermarket; except the stories just happen to be told through dance.
"If you have a narrative, it gives a structure to the performance and that becomes a way of letting people in," muses Keegan-Dolan, after rehearsals have finished. "If they get involved with what they're watching, you can give them all the beauty and poetry you want."
It's certainly a pragmatic solution to the problem afflicting contemporary dance, which is one of those art forms which all too easily alienates those who feel they are unqualified to understand, never mind enjoy, what's going on. "A strong narrative actually enables me to be more odd, because it allows people to understand what's happening, and then they're more willing to accept the rest."
In many ways, 31-year-old Keegan-Dolan is not a likely choreographer. A keen rugby player and debater in St Paul's, Raheny, in Dublin, he first danced at the age of 17 in a musical he only took part in to meet girls. Although he got the points to do law in university, he deferred his place for a year, after a "Road to Damascus moment" while working with the Billy Barrie dance troupe on a show in the Gaiety theatre. "I suddenly knew this was what I wanted to do with my life." After a foundation course in the Digges Lane dance studio in Dublin, he secured a place in the Central School of Ballet in London, and all plans to be a lawyer evaporated.
He came out of his training knowing that he would never be a classical dancer - "I was too strange and muscle-y. I felt and thought way too much" - but determined to be a choreographer, which nonetheless meant five years as a professional dancer, learning the vocabulary. Almost by accident, Keegan-Dolan started working as a movement director for opera, and was soon in demand all over the world, choreographing the English National Opera's Alcina and Manon; Ariodante with the Bayersiche Staatsoper and a new production of Idomeneo for De Vlaamse Opera, Belgium.
"Opera really taught me to think big," he says. "I think that's partly the reason I have grass on the stage and real sprinklers and all the rest in this piece."
Opera still figures large in Keegan-Dolan's repertoire - there's a possible collaboration with Opera Theatre Company, and a production of Faust with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, coming up later in the year. Yet disillusionment while working on Peter Hall's production of The Oedipus Plays for the Royal National Theatre led to a decision to give it all up. "My brother had just died and I hated what I was doing, so I just decided to stop. I was a bicycle courier for a year."
Then the call came from Mary Brady at the Firkin Crane, wondering whether he would put together a dance piece, and Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre was born. "I really wanted to work in Ireland and it didn't bother me that it was a bit of a desert as far as dance is concerned. I just wanted to do really great dance theatre." His first three pieces, including Fragile, which was inspired by his brother's death from cancer, were both critical and commercial successes and now, with this fourth piece commissioned by the Project, Keegan-Dolan surmises that his working conditions have never been better.
Regarding the somewhat beleaguered state of contemporary dance in Ireland, he is cautiously optimistic, enthusing "The time is right for change now, it's all about to happen" while still pointing out the lack of sprung floors for performance and practice, and the fact that little has changed since he himself had to go to London to study back in 1988. Although he makes no claim to be a campaigner, he is firm on one point; "For dance to improve, the focus really needs to be on making sure the dancers are fantastic. Then choreography will improve and the resources will be found."
The dancers for The Flowerbed are "hand-picked from all over Europe" and include familiar faces from other performances - Mick Dolan who first went with Keegan-Dolan to London and who now works for Tanz Theater Wien, Rachel Lopez de la Nieta, and Simon Rice of the Royal Ballet who has the good fortune to be wearing high-heeled shoes and a curly wig during most of the show. "He thinks he's his dead wife some of the time. It's sort of a Norman Bates, Psycho thing" explains Michael.
Although the story of The Flowerbed is loosely based on Romeo and Juliet - two families living side by side who can't stand the sight of each other but whose children fall in love nonetheless - it's far from being a Leaving Cert syllabus re-hash. Uptight housewives, body-building brothers and schizophrenic fathers circle each other like wary fighting cocks, highlighting the way in which a bout of aggression can seem like a well-timed ballet. At times it is odd and funny; at others it is oddly poignant. "Ultimately I'm just using movement to affect people. You'll never unite an entire audience but if they feel something visceral, then I've done my job."
The Flowerbed runs at The Project theatre, Dublin, September 6th-9th. Booking at: 1850 260027.
