The International Dance Festival continued to promote the jagged cutting edge of modern dance, which thrilled savvy audiences, writes Christine Madden
Watching Dance Karaoke, one of the International Dance Festival Ireland's offerings this year, you can't help but notice one thing in particular: everyone's smiling. This dance project, by Austrian choreographer Willi Dorner with the assistance of Irish dancer Lisa McLoughlin, filmed "normal" people doing dance routines during their "normal" workdays in part of Dublin city centre. Apart from movement, the only aspect each diverse episode shared was the obvious sense of pure pleasure and fun.
Apart from the joy and stimulation that it brings to the Irish performing arts scene, the dance festival can point to its slowly snowballing success as proof of its growth as an arts festival since its inception in 2002. It didn't shy away from shocking the public in its inaugural festival four years ago with Jerome Bel's controversial eponymous work. Two festivals and a successful court case later, the IDFI feels strong and mature enough to invite Bel back, albeit with a much tamer if equally conceptual piece, in a show of programming muscle-flexing.
With this year's announcement of the festival going from a biannual to an annual event, the IDFI's artistic director, Catherine Nunes, has a sense of its coming of age. "I really feel this year that the festival has landed, that it's breaking ground and doing something that's not happening in theatre, nor in opera," she asserts. The announcement of its transition from experimental stage to fixed star in the Irish artistic firmament came even before the festival began, indicating a "vote of confidence" in dance.
This sense of achievement derives from the festival's judicious planning and programming to bring Irish audiences up to speed with a genre that had in previous years experienced declining interest and funding. The first festival in 2002 set out to create a historical context for contemporary dance, particularly with its flagship act, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, one of the milestones of 20th-century performing art.
The second festival followed the lead, with companies such as the Mark Morris Dance Group from the US and Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker's Rosas from Belgium, although the inclusion of Thomas Lehmen's work in the programme indicated a continued interest in experimentation despite the festival's ongoing legal trouble with Bel's piece from the previous festival.
This year, however, the festival was counting on having built an audience interested and savvy enough to welcome the jagged cutting edge. The response to acts such as Les Ballets C de la B, Raimund Hoghe and John Jasperse vindicates this trust in the audience. "The enthusiasm and level of engagement the audiences had for the work shows that we can be adventurous with the programme," says Nunes. "We aim to reflect the entire landscape of dance, the diversity of the sector and its wide range of ideas and visions. I feel this is a crucial element to the success of the festival."
IN SERVING AND building its audience, the IDFI also continues to include children's, outreach and explanatory events to deepen understanding and interest. Apart from Montalvo-Hervieu's production at the Abbey, On Danse, billed as a family event, the Italian company TPO brought its Children's Cheering Carpet to The Ark. This interactive piece brought children into the basic steps of choreographic construction - following an idea physically through space, and enjoying yourself in the process.
The event, a bit like a high-tech game of Twister, took the children on a journey through a Japanese garden, elements of which were projected onto a carpet. As they hopped onto images, or chased them around the floor, "creating" sounds (provided by hidden technicians) associated with each step, they lived in an encompassing world of the imagination that they felt they could affect and control. Their delight arose equally from their sense of wonder and the unexpected as from their physical movement.
Unlike children, adults unfortunately have to be coaxed into playful movement, which usually falls under the category of making a prat of yourself. Dorner's Dance Karaoke assisted people in doing just that. Cleverly getting them to wear stripey gloves and fuzzy pink slippers, Dorner managed to draw them out of their working-day role-play as Serious People. Many of them were astonishingly agile, and the fun they had infected the karaoke audience that later watched the films in Project and had to imitate them.
RTÉ's series Dance on the Box also attempted to bring dance to a wider public. Following an open competition, they chose four films by Irish choreographers and directors to broadcast during the festival. The result was, in some cases, inspired. Ronán Ó Riagáin's film with director Nick Kelly, Why the Irish Dance that Way, presented a light-hearted take on sean-nós dancing. Filmed in the Rathcairn Gaeltacht in Co Meath, the film presents a line of people queuing at a lonely post office while the postal worker has skived off to get her hair done. Their impatient twitching turns to rhythm turns to dancing as they wait.
CHOREOGRAPHER JOHN SCOTT and director Steve Woods pull off a brilliant stroke with their film Buail. Set in Dublin Civic Offices on Wood Quay, the dancers bump and slam into each other, assemble into groups for movement communication, then evaporate apart, shake frenetically at and on desks and dash about. They act out what all of us feel there but can't show, and make excellent choreographic and cinematic use of the premises and its glassy interior. James Hosty and Margaret Corkery's Joyride presents a desperate and isolating look at a dark side of young Dublin life after hours; and Match, by choreographer Fearghus Ó Conchúir and director Dearbhla Walsh, interprets football in an athletic piece that feels like ancient Greek mythology and draws parallels between sporting struggles and the battle between Cuchulainn and Ferdia.
The IDFI also hosted a selection of events such as post-show discussions, lectures and feedback sessions with choreographers, which sought to reach existing audiences wishing to deepen their appreciation of dance.
Dance critic Deborah Jowitt joined the second week to cast a learned and benevolent glow across the events in which she partook, one of the highlights of this year's festival. Her public lecture explained salient points on contemporary dance, and several Irish dance critics had the good fortune to take part in her week-long workshop on dance criticism. The effect of her erudition and profound understanding of contemporary dance on those lucky enough to reap the benefits should ripple through the artistic community for years to come.
Jowitt, together with articulate Glaswegian critic Mary Brennan and dancer Jenny Roche, formed the panel in Critical Voices forum The Critical Path, chaired by dancer, choreographer and dance specialist Finola Cronin. With their rich background knowledge, they led the audience in an open forum of the two weeks of dance spectacle. And in another critical journey, Roche bravely bared her artistic soul in Mapping the Trace, an intensely personal exploration of her doctoral work in dance, combining story, academic exposition, live performance and video projection.
TAKEN TOGETHER WITH the daily dance performances, the two festival weeks provided a binge dance experience that, particularly this year, satisfied both the senses and the intellect to a rare degree. Each individual production pushed different buttons and clamoured for a fresh pair of eyes, an open mind and an ability to grapple with - or sit back and enjoy - a fresh and challenging spectacle.
Raimund Hoghe's beyond-radical interpretation of Swan Lake, in particular, etched its stark, hypnotically beautiful imagery into the minds of its viewers. His future participation as instructor or workshop facilitator in the art of stripping concepts of frilly ideas and stories to reveal the naked, elemental impulse quivering behind the smoke and mirrors could reap huge benefits for performing and visual artists here.
Despite its invigorating programme, the festival felt a bit smaller this year - likely due to the loss of revenue to the court case it won, but which still entailed shelling out €12,000 to cover court and legal costs. As board member Alan Gilsenan pointed out in a public discussion with Jerome Bel, this precedent presents a potential hazard to all arts institutions, who must gamble their meagre funding - and indeed their existence - in order to take artistic risks.
Over the four years of the festival's existence, it has demonstrated not only that it can attract an interested and broadening audience, but also that the calibre of the productions it invites can inform the theatre and visual arts sectors as well as dance. Perhaps in coming years, particularly when the festival becomes an annual event from 2008, policy-makers with fingers clutching purse strings will recognise the enormous benefits to be reaped from establishing a third-level professional dance or performing arts academy.
The public, as IDFI director Nunes has observed, actively engage with and enjoy the work presented in the festival. The response in particular to such crowd-pleasing events as Montalvo-Hervieu, Nigel Charnock, John Jasperse and Seosamh Ó Neachtain and Tamango proved boisterous; the intense images and conceptual richness of Ballets C de la B and Raimund Hoghe mesmerised audiences. The festival again demonstrates that people enjoy dance, given the chance to experience and learn to appreciate it. We all welcome a bit more fun in our life, and a bit more life in our fun.
