Irish Modern Dance Theatre has invited US choreographer John Jasperse to work with it; Dance Theatre of Ireland is working with Australian choreographer Joanne Leighton. In Irish dance, international collaborations are bearing fruit.
A flock of stackable chairs sail over a papered mosaic wall, crashing onto the stage. Two women tear at each other's pockets with a painful rip of velcro; one snatches out the lining and tugs the other along by the ragged material. Later, the same chairs slotted into each other horizontally across the back of the stage, someone arches and slides his way along the top like a caterpillar, to rupture through the barrier of plastic and metal at the end of the line and slump cocoon-like on the floor.
Why are they doing this? You don't know, but you've reacted to it, formed conscious or unconscious mental, emotional and sensory associations, and quite possibly passed some kind of judgment. This is the universal language of the body. This is how dancers communicate the vision of the choreographer. And, because language isn't involved, it can be understood in some way by anyone.
A non-reliance on verbal communication facilitates not only dance performance in any area of the world but also the creation of co-operative, multinational work. And in mingling their different experiences, perspectives and points of reference, choreographers and dancers heighten the appreciation of physical art and the burgeoning dance scene in Ireland.
This autumn, two companies known for international collaboration have invited choreographers from literally opposite ends of the Earth to create new works for the Irish dance stage. John Scott, artistic director of the Irish Modern Dance Theatre, is "delighted" New York choreographer John Jasperse has come to Dublin to work with him on this season's production, Autumn Dances. Particularly as "he didn't come with a pre-made piece to put in the oven, so to speak," Scott says. "He's taken risks with this. I'm very happy we could give him the conditions to create the work." Jasperse's missed fit follows on to Scott's Left and Right, a work exemplifying Scott's playful choreographic humour in the confusion and distinction of opposites.
Internationally respected and sought after, Jasperse now spends at least half of his time outside the US developing and performing his work, conducting workshops and classes, and composing work for others. "I won a competition in France in 1996," he recounts, "and since then, the majority of my performance work has been in Europe." Until now, Ireland was "the only country in Europe" he hadn't yet performed in.
Jasperse's internationalism wasn't so unusual in the US in the late 1960s and 1970s, when the various contemporary movements in New York lit the way for dance worldwide. Roles have switched now, and Europe has become a fertile ground for the multi-national exchange of choreographic inspiration. "I'm one of the few choreographers of my generation to work on both sides of the Atlantic," Jasperse says.
He has that lanky, bendy build of a dancer, conjuring the impression that, like Uri Geller's spoons, the body can mould itself to whatever the mind desires. But, as his piece missed fit demonstrates, no matter how pliable the body is, it will never assimilate into "the squareness of the environment".
"There's an implied nostalgia in the title," he elucidates. " 'Missed fit': it's like you were searching for something lost. We're working with a wall" - a divider cutting the rectangular space of the stage into rhomboid shape, a field of variously white squares running down its length - "and trying to get the body to fit on the wall. The more you try to flatten yourself, the more you become aware of the curves in the spine, the roundness of the body."
We live, he explains, in "a constructed environment: rooms are square, with flat floors and walls, corners and sharp edges. Such aimpression comes readily to a New Yorker, surrounded by a city "laid out on a grid, all in numbered squares". But no matter how hard we try to fit ourselves to this hard, unyielding environment, it won't happen.
Squares also feature in The Simulacra Stories, a work exploring structure from a different angle, by New York choreographer John Jasperse, created for and with Robert Connor and Loretta Yurick's Dance Theatre of Ireland. Originally from Australia, Leighton moved to Europe to explore the different kinds of dancing here. "There are so many styles of dancing side by side here," Leighton explains. "Stylistically there's an enormous range."
She came 10 years ago, and settled in Belgium, as she was "particularly attracted to the high physicality of work" there when she arrived. As well as working with a number of respected companies and choreographers, she formed her own company, Velvet, at the end of 1993, with which she has been creating works of singular beauty.
Dance Theatre of Ireland have made a point of inviting foreign choreographers to work with them over the past 10 years.
"Ireland is an island, and you can get isolated artistically in our world," Yurick points out. "Occasionally you have to butt up against other cultures. You have to do that to keep alive."
Rather than simply invite companies to bring their pieces on tour, Yurick says, inviting choreographers actually to work with them engages all involved in an "organic exchange". They've recently had choreographers such as Philippe Saire from Switzerland and Charles Cre Ange from France come and create new pieces with them. "It's about a process as well as a product," Yurick explains. "You spend two, three, four months working together, living together with other cultures. Bringing artists here can make a huge organic contribution to life on an island."
DTI were keen to bring Leighton over to work with them. "I've seen her perform," enthuses Yurick, "and she's an exquisite dancer." She needn't have mentioned this; although seated, Leighton dances as she speaks, her arm and hand movements in time with the conversation elegantly punctuate and convey as much of the meat of her answers as do her words. "I wouldn't have come if I wasn't convinced that nothing would be compromised," she says. "It's the first time I've come into a situation to choreograph a work for dancers I don't really know."
The outcome, The Simulacra Stories, proves again, however, that the challenge of risk focuses artistic energy to spectacular effect. This new piece takes as its reference the architectural work of Swiss architect Bernard Tschumi, who is currently based at Columbia University, in New York.
"He's one of the few architects that talks about the dialogue between the body in space and the space in the body," says Leighton. "It's not a homage to Tschumi, but a reference to his work. I've directly applied the processes he uses to structure buildings to dance, to body and space. Simple applications, such as fragmentation, which you can apply directly to movement, distortion and scale. The idea of superimposition, the construction of a new site on an old site."
Exchanging cultural foundations, superimposing the foreign onto the familiar - this happily continues the trend in dance in recent years. And Irish audiences have become alive to this - not only the dance professionals, but also the public have developed as a result.
"A lot of people underestimate the audience for dance," says Yurick. But this is a great fallacy. "The public understands the kinetic language. The magical experience, the precision, the puzzle of movement. People get that. They really do."
