Bow and Dance

Comparisons to Beckett, conceptual art, potential gentleman. Okay,
there is every likelihood the Bowing Dance is going to be my pick of
the fringe... so, I wonder where you are coming from, and how you
arrived at dance as a medium. It strikes me that your influences are
eclectic enough that you could be working in any number of media...

 Your question/observation is spot on. I grew up in a theatrical family, my father was lighting designer at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, my mother was a singer and my brother a theatre director.My first attraction was to theatre - particularly avant garde theatre. The Living Theatre blew my mind when I saw them in Dublin and later influences were Robert Wilson and later Meredith Monk - with whom I have studied and also performed.

I came to dance in my early 20s and was a struggling apprentice at Dublin City Ballet, in tights doing tendues. I also studied other movement techniques and learned a lot about the 'Judson Dance' from New York in the early 1960's: Meredith monk, Deborah Hay, Yvonne Rainer, Steve Paxton.

It took some time to find a way for the huge amount of technical information I was receiving to find a way into my body in a way I could express myself but dance is for me the most vital and powerful of the artforms. when I think about what I am doing and my work, I think of it as dance: dance as the main tree - other things: text, sound, theatricality are branches of this tree. It remains difficult, I am now entering 'middle age' and am no longer a svelte young skinny guy but I have a good sense of a dialogue and struggle with my body.

When I established my company Irish Modern Dance Theatre, I didn't perform in my work - feeling it more necessary to be outside. Then ten years ago, immediately before I began rehearsing a work ROUGH AIR - from where THE BOWING DANCE came, I took a workshop with dance legends Steve Paxton and Lisa Nelson and we all had to get up and dance. I found a lot of things in my own vocabulary were not transmissible to other dancers and felt from then on, that it was necessary for me to throw myself into the battle and dance. The dance in THE BOWING DANCE originated in the things I started to find in the workshop with Steve and Lisa.

"Dualism". Personally, I am not a big fan of it- preferring a
mystical monism or, in rare moments of joy, a faith in the essential
unity of creation. However, I am fascinated by the idea of exploring
dualism through dance- I guess I'd like to know what inspired you to
consider it, but whether it threw up any particular problems for
choreography, or actually adapted well to dance's natural development.

Well, lots of people pick up this idea of 'dualism' in the piece, the origins almost a series of happy accidents. I was sketching a duet based on bowing. This was at a time when I didn't have money to go to the studio and I was working at my desk. I had no idea who my next cast would be but the muse was with me to lay out an outline of this 'Bowing' duet. I made two columns on a page and wrote 'ME' on the left and 'YOU" on the right. I thought it would be easier to teach it this way eventually in the studio. the notes are a series of instructions, I bow, You bow, I don't bow, You look up - totally based on movement and space, influenced by bows in Martial arts.

Bowing is such a part of all performers lives, the bows, the curtain calls and I wanted to be simple. What was interesting was how the dance is a dance but also a very spare text poem and also has a visual quality on the page.

I knew a choreographer in Paris, Jacqueline Robinson, who was dying of Motor Neuron Disease and could no longer move or choreograph but could type with her left thumb. I called her and suggested she could maybe try a text based dance like what I was doing and she could fax the choreography. It made me think about ways of transmitting dances.

The instructions make the audience engage their imaginations too. I started to demonstrate this dance to the dancers, moving from one side of the stage to the other executing the instructions for both 'ME' and 'YOU'. at that point, something clicked for all of us and we all knew I had to do this dance myself.

I almost feel like a salesman selling a pitch for a duet. I have performed it for schoolchildren and they actively stand up and start bowing as i all out the instructions.

Many reviewers have noted that your work is engaged with a  battle against Irish dance's conservatism. I have a fair idea of
how this works in the UK (try telling an audience that ballet is
somewhat traditional and watch the insults fly)- but what shape does
this take in Irish dance circles?

Ireland is a country famous for text based theatre, writers and narrative. Outside of Riverdance, contemporary dance is only now beginning to find its feet. Audiences and some presenters and funders have a preconception that dance should 'tell a story' and have people aged between 18 and 28 with perfect bodies in tights. I do relish sometimes being slightly naughty or provocative to stir them up a bit.

There's a fair amount of humour in the bowing dance.... how does
humour work for you when you are creating a piece?

Well... my rehearsal proceses are quite surreal sometimes and we laugh a lot. I like my performances to have a rehearsal quality without perfection. Dance in black box theatres with stark lighting has become almost a cliche. I feel a piece is more alive and powerful when it appears less formal.

The great Irish playwright Sean O'Casey is famous for his tragi-comedys - the audience is laughing one moment and then something terrible happens and affects us deeper that way. Maybe its a habit I acquired watching all the Sean O'Casey plays in m the Abbey in my childhood.

And the inevitable- who else do you feel an affinity with within
dance- or other art forms?

I have a huge worship of Jonathan Burrows and think Wendy Houston is terrific too. Meredith Monk, choreographer, composer, singer, dancer, filmmaker - performing in this years main Festival programme is a huge influence. I also hugely admire William Forsythe, the late, great Merce Cunningham and Jerome Bel, the current French enfant terrible of dance. I also hugely admire US choreographer John Jasperse and of course adored Pina Bausch.