Michael Seaver

Watermark

Dance Theatre of Ireland

Merely flicking through the back catalogue of Dance Theatre of Ireland reveals an insightful history of choreographers Robert Connor and Loretta Yurick. They are empathetically drawn to the inexplicable in nature and myth, a force that is traceable to Jerry Pearson's Lunar Parables, which they danced with the Dublin Contemporary Dance Theatre in the 1980s. In more recent years they have included technology in their performances to amplify their diatribes against our increasingly inhuman lives, but Watermark is a return to the elemental.

The work's credo lies in Theodor Schwenk's book, Sensitive Chaos: The Creation of Flowing Forms in Water and Air, and although there are rippling limbs and quivering torsos on view, Watermark is a deeper reading of the book. Like the pre-set video of waves over rock, it is the unpredictability and impermanence of a collection of short movement phrases that resonate most. Fluid in style and in time, they seduce the eye as easily as water, as bodies come together and part in irregular intervals and patterns.

Lighting designer Mark Gallone sweeps dappled circles across the floor. Like a receding tide, the light follows Connor's feet off-stage long after David Yoken's drumming has dimmed, or focuses on a single performer at the end of ensemble dance. Along with the live and simulated water on a back screen, it embalms the action rather than highlights it, so toward the end the seduced eye yearns more variation in the vocabulary.

But then a regular pulse sneaks into Rory Pierce's sound washes and a quintet of random movement phrases gradually coalesces into unison duets and trios, but ultimately lead us to an unsatisfying and rushed ending. But in reflecting Schwenk's belief that forms arise through the interplay of currents and their forces, the motive and movement are well matched.

November 11, 2005

Dance Theatre of Ireland | Pavilion Theatre