The second International Dance Festival Ireland had its high points but also revealed some key problems, writes Michael Seaver
'It takes great courage to speak your truth," Barbara Bergin, a writer, told the performers of Keeping The Faith, from the Dochas women's unit at Mountjoy Prison, before they staged their production. The idea of being true to your vision seemed to emerge whenever dance was talked about at International Dance Festival Ireland, which finished on Sunday, and is a notion the festival has to come to grips with in contemplating its future.
Second time round is always more difficult, but there are already warning signals around aspects of the festival that need attention before a third event. Most crucial is the issue of how the festival fits in to the Irish dance scene.
On the plus side there was more evidence of co-productions. Dance Machine, a collaboration with Project's visual-arts programme, appeared to please those who frequent white spaces more than black spaces. While visual artists seemed to bask in the interactivity of the gallery space, dancers bemoaned the arch naivety of the simple on-off electronic triggering that movement produced. In the past Project's theatre spaces have hosted dance companies such as half/angel, which use motion sensing to capture the essence of a movement rather than just signal the fact that it happened at all. Jasmin Vardimon's offhand performance to demonstrate the machine on the festival's opening night added little to its persuasiveness.
The Ark also presented an expanded programme for children, with workshops, performances and a symposium on children's dance. Cathy O'Kennedy of Fluxusdance spoke about the need to be truthful performing for children, quoting the late John Blacking in saying: "The best is only just good enough." Later, Gaye Tanham of the Arts Council chaired a session on responsibilities and strategies for furthering children's dance in Ireland. A clash with another event meant I couldn't stay for all of the discussion, but I left the Ark feeling that some meaningful dialogue between producers, professional dance companies and youth dance practitioners was taking place around this long- neglected part of dance.
Which made the performance by Danstheater Dee, from the Netherlands, a week later all the more frustrating, as it seemed to commit most of the sins in the canon. It was slowly paced, conceptually simplistic, had featherweight choreography, contained unprepared and unresolved violence and ultimately patronised the children by creating a barrier between active performers and passive audience. Word-of-mouth reports on Aracaladanza, from Spain, which I was unable to attend, were much more positive.
Well represented at both festivals, dance films have, in the absence of site-specific performances, been the best opportunities to get dance in to public spaces. Thierry de Mey is a frequent collaborator with Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker; his visit neatly tied in with her performances. Rosas Danst Rosas, shown in a chilly, blustery Meeting House Square, showed how his cinematic interpretation changed a work that has been in repertoire for more than 20 years. Its setting, a derelict school designed by the Bauhaus architect Henry van de Velde, magnified the compulsive gestures and inner anguish in de Keersmaeker's choreography.
Later in the festival he presented the première of Counterphrases, made up of extracts of de Keersmaeker's choreography filmed in gardens in Belgium, which were then given to composers such as Steve Reich, Magnus Lindberg and Jonathan Harvey to compose to. This reversal of procedure, where the composer writes for the finished film (with neither dialogue nor contact with the choreographer or film-maker) produced strikingly contrasting results. Not all of the composers responded directly to the movement, instead seeking out associations with light or formal structure. A common trait was the need to fill every moment with a musical event; those that allowed the movement to breathe, such as de Mey's composition, worked best.
A study of his other films, combining a screening and masterclass, mixed working secrets and insights with plain common sense, as did David Hinton two years ago, at the first festival. Unlike Hinton's talk, however, there was more interest from choreographers this time around, although they were from the independent dance scene rather than from established companies.
Choreographers and dancers also made valuable contributions to a debate on dance criticism. The Asia-Europe Foundation supported the visit of six critics from Asia and Europe, who contributed to the Beyond Words broadsheet, published in the final week of the festival, and took part in the discussion, at Project. Questions of speaking your truth also emerged here, with divergence on issues of advocacy and support versus criticism and judgment. Paul Johnson, who has worked as a dancer, choreographer, critic and writer, and now works for the Arts Council, stressed the importance of dialogue and a fluid relationship between practitioner and critic. Dialogue could be fostered, it was suggested, by facilities such as www.choreograph.net, a Web-based forum set up by Daghdha Dance Company.
Away from talk of policies and strategies, a welcome reminder of the primal power of dance to change lives came during Keeping The Faith. Pat Graney, a Seattle-based choreographer, and her Prison Project team took mapping as their theme. The 15 performers created maps of their lives with drawings that were a backdrop to their dancing and spoke with honesty about their dreams and the realities of home and family. It was in the post-performance discussion that the effects of the self-affirming experience were most evident, and although the project was as much about process as product the whoops and cheers that greeted the end of the performance reflected appreciation of the honesty in the presentation.
Sitting in the Dochas unit seemed far removed from the festival's opening night, when Mark Morris Dance Group performed at the Abbey; the contrast throws open questions of what the festival sets out to achieve. A varied and eclectic programme can also be an unfocused programme, and there still seems little heart or identity to the festival. Programming is still very heavily based on Dance Umbrella, London's contemporary-dance festival: Le Temps Du Repli (Josef Nadj), In Bella Copia (Déjà Donné), Both Sitting Duet (Jonathan Burrows and Mattio Fargion), Once (Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker) and Stephen Petronio's programme, which were the backbone of the Irish festival, all appeared at Dance Umbrella late last year. In addition, Rain (Rosas) featured in 2002 and Morris is a regular participant. Common programming is a problem with all festivals, but I have yet to see it as acute as at International Dance Festival Ireland.
Of course, providing audiences with the opportunity to see international work is an important part of its brief, but the festival also has to help to develop dance, which includes integrating, supporting and enhancing local work. The importance of a festival to Ireland's dance infrastructure has been well documented through the feasibility studies and seminars that marked International Dance Festival Ireland's slow evolution. Now that it is here it must deliver these benefits.
With audience figures down it may need to re-examine its approach. It is still a Dublin festival rather than an Irish one, and its title is as dull as its logo. High ticket prices must be putting people off coming to all but a handful of performances: the cheapest seats for de Keersmaeker's solo Once were €20, compared with £5 (€7.50) at Dance Umbrella last year. You would have paid no more than £7 (€10.50) sterling to see New Art Club's Electric Tales at the Nott Dance festival, in Nottingham, on May 11th - but €20 in Dublin 10 days later.
The festival seems aware of these issues, and board members privately acknowledge the need to re-evaluate. The board has a wide expertise and, with dedicated staff, is well placed to instigate change. The most immediate question concerns the frequency of the festival. Much of the excitement around the first event, two years ago, fizzled out before this year's began. It's difficult to see any momentum being sustained through another two-year gap.
