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Michael Seaver
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Recent reviews :
Rhythmic Space
Irish Modern Dance Theatre
The first movements in Rhythmic Space set the tone for the rest of the piece: simple jumps. But they’re not the usual dancer’s jumps, careful and precise. These are the wild, exuberant, off-centre, unbalanced jumps of a lone dancer in the middle of a tiny dusty disused chapel up some wooden stairs behind a bright red door in Carlow’s narrow College Street. Everything about John Scott’s latest choreography is unconventional, but it’s a comforting eccentricity that is neither attention seeking nor smug. Lit by glorious stain-glass windows as well as garish wall-mounted fluorescent strips, the work is site specific, but not in the usual “look at us interact with the space” kind of way. Instead it has soaked up the faded beauty in the dishevelled surroundings and through rough and ready movement, reveals a similarly beautiful essence.
The loose premise of learning a dance opens possibilities of plot and play on memory. This can either be suddenly unleashed physicality that is like a nightmare relived – such as the opening jumps – or a dancer standing in a perfect fifth-position that was carefully honed through years of training. Elsewhere in the dance, Aisling Doyle (choreographic assistant to Scott) stands on stage facing the other eight performers and talks them through a movement phrase, using the unorthodox language of the dance studio. She mentions “take out your heart”, which sets things spinning tangentially into another kind of dance, the mouthed “boom-booms” of heartbeats evolving into hip-hop beatbox.
With text in English, Farsi, Portuguese and Lingalla, John Scott isn’t aiming for comprehensive understanding, and that is just the same with his movement language: physical babbling side-to-side with identifiable gestures. And even in the clarity, there is ambiguity, so the spoken “no more gravity” isn’t just a movement metaphor but reflects a succession of funny faces that are pulled on what used to be an altar. Throughout the diverse cast – including an Opera singer, ballet and contemporary dancers and survivors of torture - there is cheerfulness, borne of contentment and confidence in the material.
June 13, 2007
Éigse Carlow Arts Festival | Irish Modern Dance Theatre
Did I make you up?
"Although the lengthy programme notes describe creative points of departure, the place of arrival in Did I Make You Up? is a simple reflection on love that has a sense of timelessness. Contemporary and old-fashioned speak with equal voice as three lonely individuals bask in the glow of idealised love."
(The Irish Times)
James son of James
"Michael Keegan Dolan's self-styled midlands trilogy has come full cycle and returned to the territory of its first instalment, Giselle. Not only is the show back within the focussed confines of the Samuel Beckett Theatre's square stage after the sprawling, emotionally barren peat hills of The Bull, but there is also a return to the moral territory of good versus evil."
(www.irishtheatremagazine.com)
Traces
Les 7 doigts de la main/The 7 Fingers
"Circus has left the tent, acquired the word "new" and now slaps it out on stage with more traditional theatrical forms. Some shows have retained the virtuosity and immediacy of the ring and metamorphosed into riveting theatrical experiences. Traces isn't one of them."
(The Irish Times)