Ríonach Ní Néill's new dance work uses an all-male cast to usurp long-standing notions of femininity, writes Michael Seaver

When Ríonach Ní Néill talks about A Thing Of Beauty And A Joy Forever she draws you back to the past. Victorian characters from Katherine Mansfield's The Daughters Of The Late Colonel, Winnie from Beckett's Happy Days and the wading girl in Joyce's A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man are all impulses in imagining and creating her latest choreography. But then she mentions Mr Pearl.

Sitting in a quiet hotel bar, she gushes her ideas and rationale with a persuasive enthusiasm born of two years of research. "I had this initial idea of corsets and the overly pretty ideal we have of Victorian girls. I took that time because it's the ultimate period when we think of femininity, ultra-femininity and the cliché of femininity. For me we are still living in the tail end of that, and women today are still living in the traces of these clichés of femininity.

"So I started to read stories from that period, like The Daughters Of The Late Colonel, which is about two spinster sisters who spent their time minding and running around after their father. It's a week after his burial, and they are wondering what they are going to do with their lives, but their lives have been so restricted that they can't even daydream. Winnie from Happy Days has also worked her way into the piece. She too is happy with the restrictions that life has dealt her."

So what about Mr Pearl? "He's a corset maker in Paris who wears corsets himself. I read an interview with him, and some things he said would make you weep. His goal is to squeeze into a 16-inch corset" - at present he wears an 18-inch corset - " 'but I have bones', he said, 'that cannot move unless I am operated on'. For him, wearing a corset is a form of body art that deals with mutilation. And yet he says it in a positive way. This for him is a positive solution for how to deal with living, and his way of dealing with life is to shut himself up in a corset. So when I read all these things there was a throughflow, a thread. Why would you get into a corset and why would you restrict yourself to limiting roles in life? It seems that it is easier to open yourself up to change."

As Ní Néill talks about her work you sense that she is still discovering new things, making connections and filing away ideas in her head. Slight uneasiness with the mantle of choreographer reflects her background, which is more academic than practical. Yet her studious past serves her well as she gathers a storehouse of influences and references. "Being an academic, I've always been living my ideas on paper. I think of dance theatre more like poetry than a straight story. With poetry you can be one step away from reality, and that's how I approached this piece. Your fantasy land or interior land is more important to you. I think dance has an advantage over theatre. Sure, it's not as good at communicating a definite idea, but being non-prescriptive means you can suggest a richer interior world."

A full-time member of Tanz Bremen for two years, Ní Néill shows the influence of German Tanztheater, or dance theatre, in her work. She was first exposed to Tanztheater methods while performing in The Murder Ballads, by Finola Cronin, a former dancer with Pina Bausch at Tanztheater Wuppertal. "It is very different to what I did before. Your characterisations are hugely important. I played a dead girl's dress in the last work we did in Bremen. It might sound a bit weird, but that was the role, and we spent a long time talking about that 'character'. So characterisation of abstract things has become important to me in my own choreography."

Expressionist Tanztheater is considered dated by some other Europeans: Ní Néill identifies a cultural border around Germany, with Benelux, France and Britain closer to Boston than to Berlin as far as dance is concerned. In October 2001 the choreographers Jérôme Bel, Xavier Le Roy and La Ribot and the critic Christophe Wavelet organised a meeting in Vienna to discuss the idea of a European performance policy. Their manifesto, which was signed by Thomas Lehman, Boris Charmatz and Jonathan Burrows, among others, states: "We consider the borders between disciplines, categories and nations to be fluid, dynamic and osmotic."

In spite of national differences and strong individual voices there is a coherent vision within these practices. Yet central to the manifesto is the presence of the dancer, which can be traced as an essential in the work of Bausch.

"I really found it easy to relate to the German approach to performance, although the audiences are certainly different - a bit more reserved - and my relationship to the audience has changed. At a very base level, when you have to do 70 performances a year it very much becomes a job. The focus is on the audience and on being sure you are conveying your dancing to them. Are they getting it? This was very different coming from the work I did in the Gaeltacht, particularly on a solo called Seandálaíocht, and has changed how I think about the relationship between the performer and audience."

In usurping notions of Victorian femininity in A Thing Of Beauty And A Joy Forever, she has cast three men (Fearghus Ó Conchúir, Philip Connaughton and, from Tanz Bremen, Miroslaw Zydowicz), who play multiple characters. Although the corset has lost some of its seedy connotations, it has been promoted within haute couture, particularly by Jean-Paul Gaultier. He designed an infamous corset for Madonna in 1989, while Mr Pearl laced up Victoria Beckham for her wedding; in both cases they exaggerated a cliché of female form. But by deciding to cast male performers Ní Néill has magnified the corset's "character" and increased its metaphor.

The all-male team is completed by the actor Mike Carbery, the composer Dan Bodwell, the musicians Peter Altenberg and Peter Browne, the voice coach Paul Keenan and the writer Michael Harding, who acted as a dramaturgical mentor.

Already booked in for Dublin Fringe Festival next month, A Thing Of Beauty And A Joy Forever will then tour, particularly in Germany. Being contracted to Tanz Bremen is restricting - "I'm not meant to be any more than 30 kilometres from the theatre on a free day" - but she has negotiated time off for herself and Zydowicz for the upcoming performances.

Whatever reticence Ní Néill has about being labelled a choreographer - "It still sounds odd" - there is a clarity in the way she describes her work that reveals a deep-thinking creativity. She seems to enjoy the slow evolution of works: A Thing Of Beauty And A Joy Forever took two years, and her next piece for Tanz Bremen is not due until the autumn of 2005. Her methodology of gathering diverse materials perfectly serves this creative pace.

• A Thing Of Beauty And A Joy Forever is at Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray, on Friday at 8 p.m. and as part of Dublin Fringe Festival next month