In the elegant Pillar Room of the Rotunda Hospital, Rubato Ballet filled Monday's lunch hour with an appropriately site-specific Fertility Dance. Fiona Quilligan has choreographed a piece far from the primitive mating celebration the title conjures up. Instead she has created a beautiful and highly original illustration of conception and birth. Most original of all, surely, is the fact that it is the two men in the cast who actually give birth, lowering their partners, held high in the foetal position, to the ground while they maintain plies in 2nd position.
The pillars are used, both for concealment in lieu of wings to retire to, and also to support the three women in deep arabseques, while sculptor Susan Cuffe strings overhead like a paper chain her symbolic illustrations of the birth process, made from copper wire decorated with river pearls, amethyst and glass beads. Zelda Francesca, Katherine O'Malley and Miriam Bowe are as graceful in the slow opening walk as when spinning to a climax before returning to a quiet ending. Barefoot but classically poised, even to standing on pointe occasionally, they are well supported by Malachy Bourke and Michael Cooney. Well worth a visit.
At 1.10 p.m. daily until Friday and 3.15 p.m. on Sunday (26th)
