THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
Sadler's Wells East, Stratford Walk, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London, E20 2AR, from September 17 to 20
Anyone who has entertained fantasies of being a dancer, or anyone who just enjoys a tale well told by a charming Irish man (the best talkers), will enjoy this engaging piece of dance-theatre.
Fundamentally it’s Michael Keegan-Dolan in memoir mode, recounting a selection of significant incidents from his life. It premiered at the Dublin Theatre Festival in 2022 and has been around the world since, including St Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. A regular visitor to Sadler’s Wells, this is his debut at their great new theatre, Sadler's Wells East, in Stratford, London.
It’s a story of innocence and experience as Keegan-Dolan recounts his awkward school days growing up as a sensitive young man in pre-liberal Ireland, his Billy Elliott like dreams thwarted by a coldly distant father, his gaucheness on arriving in London as a ballet student, living off beans on toast and being shocked at experiencing anti-Irish prejudice in the aftermath of IRA bombings. There’s a wry reflection on his time in an interminable run as an ensemble member of the cast of a West End production of Carousel and his failed audition for Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker, the steely High Priestess of European dance, who smelled the ‘musical theatre dancer’ in him, much to her disdain.
With a witty mix of pathos and honesty it explores how he found his creative voice through developing his own companies and forging a new path developing bold, imaginative, heavily Pina Bausch-informed dance-theatre pieces (The Bull, Swan Lake/Loch na hEala, MAM) which are rooted in place and language and which celebrate the life experiences of his dancers, who were usually a multi-cultural bunch. Here he’s just joined by his long-time collaborator the French dancer Rachel Poirier, who, even he admits, steals the show from under him. She co-directed this with Adam Silverman.
We meet the two as they unload the props from a huge theatre packing crate. There follows a series of vignettes where the two swap roles and Poirier either helps act out the comic interludes or serves as a counterpoint to Keegan-Dolan. They’re both brilliant contemporary dancers yet firmly grounded in classical technique, building on it and rising above it.
The use of music throughout is joyous, from Talking Heads to Elgar to Stravinsky, culminating in a stupendous Ravel’s ‘Bolero’ when Poirier comes into her own in an audacious, hypnotic and witty solo, mining that music for every possible emotion that can be wrought from it. It puts the famous Bejart version in the shade.
The piece touches on themes of identity and nationality but what it leaves you with is his bold defiance in the face of others prejudice or his own crippling and unnecessary Impostor Syndrome. In other hands this could have toppled over into narcissistic self-pity but Keegan-Dolan’s and Poirier’s personal charm and magnetism is enough to carry the day.
