Wednesday night's audience for Irish Modern Dance Theatre's Rough Air, seated on two sides of the Project's Space Upstairs, was thoroughly unsettled from the first notes of Mel Mercier's brilliant score. It was further unsettled by the first movements on stage: Justine Doswell's wonderfully controlled collapse, so slow it was like the disintegration of the body into death, filmed in slow motion.
Well-warned of turbulence ahead, we shifted uncomfortably on our tip-up benches as James Hosty and Phillip Connaughton joined Doswell in displays of angst, all three exchanging uneasy body language which helped to push each other even further off balance and, in Connaughton's case, into positive frenzy. Like the mime artist who displays the placards to announce Marcel Marceau's numbers, Joanna Banks revealed the causes of our unease, the last word displayed being "DEATH". Indeed, her silent, unhurried but unstoppable walk and black costume might well be that of death itself. All this hung together, but I could not really relate John Scott's poem The Bowing Dance, spoken and acted out by him, to the rest of the piece, except perhaps as a comment on the failure of modern man to communicate.
Henk Schut's design suspended chairs overhead on chains against whitewashed walls, as well as hanging wire mesh screens, which had a disorientating effect as they distorted the dancers' bodies when seen through them in the pools of light created by Rob Furey's design. The dancers showed considerable athleticism and control in executing Scott's choreography, but I regret that, except for Banks, their grace was not required.
Performances continue at the Project until Saturday, with a matinee at 1 p.m. tomorrow (to book, phone 01-6796622); the show then tours to Limerick, Cork, Drogheda, Galway, Monaghan and Waterford. Information on 01-8749616
