See-Saw @ Dance Base

Ciotog’s See-Saw targets anyone from one to one hundred. While many contemporary dance works ignore young children, Ríonach Ní Néill tells me that for him, young children have an inspirational effect. "Younger people often have a less complicated connection with dance, which an adult can learn from," he says. ‘Adults watch both the dance and their children's responses to the dance and get more out of it. By opening the work out to the 0s to 12s, letting them lead the way, adults can see dance anew’.

Rionach didn’t initially set out to create a multi-generational piece, and this is an abstract work – with no storyline. It is the context rather than the content which make this piece suitable for children and their companions. "Strangely enough, the work was developed first with no consideration for who would be in the audience, and then when I was presenting it as a work-in-progress, I realised that the audiences which included large age mixes - including children - connected most with it."

Once he’d identified his audience, he developed the piece with this wide age-range in mind. "In preparing it, I just worked more on changing the context and not the content, to make it more comfortable and relaxed for small people to watch." As the parent of two children under five, Rionach admits a vested interest: "It can be frustrating as a parent of young children not to be able to bring them to a show, so I really wanted to make one that everyone could come and share in."

Indeed, the title See-Saw refers to people watching and looking, "the bouncing between looking and being looked at, between knowing who you are by how people treat and talk with you, between how the meaning of a dance piece is created between the choreographer, the performers and the audience." In fact, the title of the work inspires its content – "once that title came, then physical see-saw metaphors came in."

Looking and being looked at is a big part of dance and, Rionach adds, is "a theme of life. The most fundamental way we give value to each other is by acknowledging each other through looking and allowing others to look at us. Any parent of small children will be familiar with little kids badgering them until they just stop and look!"

The company’s Irish name means 'left-handed person'. "To be 'ciotach' or 'left-handish' means 'awkward' although it’s just that left-handed movement patterns are less common, therefore less understood - which can also be said to be true of perceptions of contemporary dance. I liked the juxtaposition of 'ciotach' and 'dance', the seemingly clumsy and seemingly graceful, while neither are truly so. And 'Ciotóg' is a lovely-sounding word!"