Reviews

Out Of Time with Colin Dunne,
London 2009/Ireland 2008

Colin Dunne took his first Irish dance class at the age of three. Within six years he'd won the first of many world championship titles. Later, his grown-up credits include, inevitably, Riverdance and, more recently, an acclaimed (and self-parodying) supporting role in Fabulous Beast's award-winning The Bull.

Now 40, the Birmingham-born dancer's likeable new solo show is no puffed-up piece of exhibitionism à la Michael Flatley. At roughly an hour-long, Out of Time is instead an intriguingly postmodern, chamber-sized exercise in career self-assessment and a chance for Dunne perhaps to lay to rest some rewarding but demanding demons.

He begins and ends the performance barefoot on a stage empty save for a low, multihinged white platform. This is cleverly reconfigured into a screen on which to project vintage film footage of Irish dancers. Like the Blue Peter clip of Dunne as a gifted ten-year-old, they are a charming yet ghostly part of a tradition that haunts him and against which he's trying to redefine himself.

It's fascinating to observe Dunne's silent deconstruction of the warm-up: arms loose, sinking his weight into the floor, suddenly flicking out a quick foot or springing into the air. He's nimble and neat, but at times too broody and introspective for the show's good. Steering clear of facile connections with his audience, he risks not engaging with us at all. But not to worry. Dunne tides us over with a playful sailor's hornpipe, balancing this diversion with sober, overextended experimentation in which his feet are wired for sound. Later he sits, sweat-soaked, and removes his shoes. The release is palpable, empathy-inducing, as is the loose, free-flown solo that ends the evening. What we're witnessing is a dancer's liberation.

Colin Dunne’s new solo dance work, Out of Time, has been a long time coming, in fact it would appear that it has taken his entire life as a dancer to get to this point, and from the wide grin that lights up his face every now and then during the performance, he seems more than a little delighted about it all, and he should be.

This is a remarkably uplifting and extraordinarily moving memoir in motion on the subject of the dancer and his dance, seeking to explore where he personally fits into the inner sanctum of traditional Irish dance, and where that dance itself fits into the wider tradition of dancing as a form of creative expression. Dunne has spent a lifetime dancing his way to here from the fiercely competitive arena of the Irish Dancing Feis and the various national and international Irish Dancing Championships to the Irish dancing carnival that followed the Riverdance phenomenon. More perhaps than most, he has earned the right to ask all the big questions, and in Out of Time he does, with passion, but without a hint of arrogance, so that what surprises is the disarmingly intimate and almost tender manner in which he is also prepared to answer them. Alone and barefoot at the beginning, in a small and deliberately restrained section of the space, he gradually expands his movement to encompass the entire performance area, eventually strapping on his dancing shoes as he is joined on various screens by the projected images of the ghosts of Irish dancing past, as well as his own ghosts, his ten year old self, dancing for all he is worth on the BBC’s Blue Peter programme, so that past and present, shadow and substance loose the lines that divide them as they merge into one almighty chorus line of dancers, beating out an ancient rhythm that ultimately refuses to be confined or defined in any narrow or constricting way.

There have been few if any more eloquent or effective contributions to the decades of debate that have taken place on the subject of what constitutes the nature and authenticity of Irish step dancing, and certainly none whatsoever presented with such grace of movement and such gently deprecating humour as this genuine labour of love.
As always it was a real pleasure just watching Dunne dance, his lightness of step and fluidity has the hallmark of a real virtuoso performer, but it was the extent of the deep psychological interrogation, taking place within this particular piece, which made it so much more rewarding for the audience. There is a vast amount of emotional intelligence contained in Out of Time, and an equally large amount of technological intelligence has been carefully utilised to design and deliver it. Dunne collaborated in its making with Fionan de Barra for the live sound processing used to powerful effect throughout, as well as lighting designer Colin Grenfell and director Sinéad Rushe, so that while it is most definitely a solo performance, devised and delivered by Dunne, it is also a contemporary multi-media and inter-disciplinary experience, with film footage from the RTE archives cleverly redesigned by Sean Westgate and recorded music from Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill. Out of Time will most definitely delight and provoke in equal measure.

Night-Light, Edinburgh 2005/London 2006

Lucy Powell, Time Out **** (24-31 May 2006)

Between them, Rushe and Litalien uncover a wealth of wisdom on this most slippery of subjects. Childhood games, snatches of songs and disconnected facts come unbidden to life, and the harder Rushe tries to ignore Litalien’s tauntings, the louder she shouts to be heard.

Beautifully lit and imaginatively staged by Rushe, the dialogue is scattered with torn rags of poetry, the discomforting detritus of an unquiet mind. It is hugely evocative.

Metro**** (23 August 2005)

The starting point for this lively, absorbing multi-dimensional two-hander is that strange, hallucinatory world between waking and sleep, as experienced by a child who's afraid of the dark.

Using a fluid, precisely synchronised blend of dance, movement, mime, narrative and dialogue, Sinéad Rushe and Camille Litalien explore outward from here to touch on the primal origins of nursery rhymes and fairly tales, and on the real-life terrors or anxieties that our minds — throughout our lives — translate into various kinds of bogeymen.

Barring one or two slightly over-extended dance passages, it's a meticulously crafted piece, displaying a rigorous thoroughness in conception, structure and execution that's all too rare on the Fringe.  Its darker moods are disarmingly offset with flashes of quizzical humour, as Rushe and Litalien step momentarily or partially out of character, while shadowy, deftly modulated lighting and an atmospheric score wrap up an impressive theatrical package.

Claire Piela, The List **** (15-18 August 2005/Issue 259)

What are you afraid of?  Be it spiders or loss of loved ones, the things we fear the most cling to the subconscious and are stirred in our dreams where we explore our deepest anxieties.  Delving into the imagination of two children, out of Inc's piece is about fear born out of the threat of external forces, such as the nurse with a needle, as well as the fear of loneliness, illness and death which haunts us all.

Devised by Sinéad Rushe and Camille Litalien, the performance combines fragments of dance with poetic storytelling and unwinds to the exhilarating musical contrasts of Chopin and Massive Attack.  The performers use dance, mime and physical theatre, contorting their bodies to convey their childhood imagery and stepping out of role to confront the audience with own personal reflections on what frightens them.  Best at its most strange, with moments of sleepy darkness so innovatively framed, this show will quietly charm you.

Life in the Folds,  Edinburgh 2001/London 2002

Rachel Halliburton, The Evening Standard (17 January 2002)

Life, but not as we know it.

Henri Michaux was a rigorous explorer of his internal universe, using literature, drugs, and eastern meditation to push back the boundaries of a mind that was forever rebelling against his bourgeois Belgian birth.  Life in the Folds pays an intriguing tribute to the writer and artist, even if it provokes questions about whether Michaux's hallucinogenic wanderings ever produced visions of two girls clad in shimmering green trousers and waistcoats, dancing energetically to Irish and jazz music.

For that, in essence, is the show. Sinéad Rushe is a former All-Ireland dance champion, while Jenny Boot is her enthusiastic collaborator – and from such unpromising beginnings a piece of exquisite, ironic and sharply engaging theatre has been born.

Michaux was obsessed with the threat a hostile external world poses to the fragile identity of the individual, so it is appropriate that Life in the Folds begins with a prose poem about sharp instruments piercing the skin until 'a neurone spits out its electric suffering.'  As the lights dim at the show's start, a spotlight highlights a member of the audience, who turns on the other audience members with a challenging, amused stare, and talks about being attacked by a sabre as if she were recalling an entertainingly embarrassing incident at a cocktail party.

Rushe and Boot have calculated the tone carefully, so that Michaux's often violent mental meanderings are recalled with the detached humour that made him a master of absurdity.  One poem reflects on how he decided to put people who irritated him into a sack – whether they were 'mediocrities' or 'boring women', and the pair accompany their recitation with a vividly choreographed session where they become comically trapped in the sacks the writer designated for social rejects.

The Irish dancing is executed professionally yet ironically – since both give it a raised-eyebrow approach which means that physically they are in tune with the urbanity of the words they utter.  'I reduce him to a sausage,' cries Rushe, leaping around and pounding her hand into her fist, while Boot shows the audience a face that could launch a thousand absurdities.

The result is a refreshing tribute to a fascinating writer. This is a bold and intelligent delight.

Jonathan Lovett, The Scotsman (17 August 2001)

Imagine Poe and Gogol meeting to get high and dance and you come close to the experience of watching this startling fusion of movement, music and hallucinogenic prose. Dark and surreal, the writings of Henry Michaux were often concocted after a heavy dose of mescaline and his Kafkaesque world of sinister images reveals a restless mind at war with itself.

The adventurous duo, Sinéad Rushe and Jenny Boot, have taken two books of Michaux's poetry and in a collection of dance scenes have created something equally exotic and vivid. The performers blend their bodies to depict the motion of a saw through a chest, the extraction of tendons from limbs and the spit-roasting of a dinner party guest. When they break, they pick up the connecting thread of a character called Plume who suffers a thousand tortures and humiliations but exacts revenge by imprisoning people in cellars and bags.

If this all sounds a little too warped, then rest assured it is done with the lightest of touches and the scene where the two women imprison themselves in large bags and roll around the stage is brilliantly executed and very witty.

They capture the poetry's essence in the movement and clever fusion of Irish and jazz music, and bring something of Michaux's spirit in their appearance; the two pale, waif-like figures would not look out of place in one of Michaux's paintings. Their wide-eyed look of surprise would suit the absurdist comedy of a Beckett play. There are no exaggerated expressions or mugging; they let their feet do the talking - particularly Rushe, whose manic jig routines are a brilliant cross between Riverdance and Michael Jackson's Thriller video. The exhaustion of both actors at the end of the play is testament to an exhilarating piece of work which is that rare thing on the Fringe - inventive contemporary dance with provocative subject matter.

Nick Thorpe, The Independent (9 August 2001)

If you like trawling for hidden magic in back-alley Fringe venues, let me save you time. Life in the Folds, tucked away in Hill Street, is the most delightfully bizarre piece of theatre you're likely to find this side of mescaline. From the surrealist prose poetry of Henri Michaux (himself a little partial to hallucinogens, apparently), Sinéad Rushe and Jenny Boot conjure a waking dream encompassing everything from jazz dance to slapstick, drum'n'bass to gothic horror.

Threading the poems and music together is a clown-like character called Plume, who travels the world in a series of tragi-comic and grotesque adventures, including the accidental dismemberment of his wife. Rushe and Boot pass his role seamlessly between them, using startlingly inventive choreography, a few choice props and a humorous synergy that recalls Beckett's Vladimir and Estragon.

One moment, Rushe is a fine-tuned blur across the stage; the next, she is stuffed in a canvas bag, ready for the 'sausage cellar'. It's like Hieronymus Bosch meets Riverdance. Yet the scenes of camp horror (spit-roasting of annoying dinner-party guests, anyone?) only serve to heighten the unexpected beauty in this oddly life-enhancing show. See it for dance theatre at its innovative, exuberant best.