DISCOMFORT ZONE:Sportswriter – and modern dance virgin – KEITH DUGGANtakes in a performance at Galway Arts Festival
ON A summery evening in Galway, heading down the Dyke Road to see the Michael Clark Company dance show, I was amazed to see scores of young lads, swigging carry-outs and heading in the direction of the Black Box, in high humour. For a worrying minute, it seemed as if Galway’s disaffected youth was in the grip of modern-dance fever. But then it became clear that the crowd were heading for two different forms of cultural enlightenment: half were bound for the pleasures of Mr Clarke, but the Buckfast brigade were destined for Galway United v Dundalk, which was playing next door in Terryland Park.
In normal circumstances, my job as a sports journalist would have had me heading to some game or other as well. It felt a bit odd to be passing the green carpet of Terryland to review a modern-dance performance. The only sights I had ever seen remotely resembling modern dance were when the New Zealand rugby team performed the Haka prior to an international match in France, and when the athletes from Armagh and Tyrone engaged in an illegal waltz during an Ulster final at Clones a few years back.
I wasn’t sure whether to bring the usual paraphernalia, such as a pen, notebook and stopwatch, or to don a pair of leg warmers.
If you have never been to the Black Box and want to simulate the experience, simply wear two winter coats and sit in a sauna with your eyes closed. But in its favour, it has a great location, and the general look suited the Michael Clark Company.
There is something about the term “modern dance” that brings to mind those niche shows that used to run in the early evening on BBC2 featuring pale and incredibly athletic people solemnly running through routines wearing garb that looked like the cast-offs of some Communist-era Olympic gymnastics team.
And there was a touch of minimalist austerity about the Michael Clark Company. Programme notes advised that the first performance was titled Swan Lack. The set was a blank stage, lit for the first half with a hypnotic column of pale light that moved slowly. Even the untutored eye could distinguish the swans among the dancers, but these were not happy birds. These were morbid swans, their fate played out against a droning electro soundtrack that did not inspire optimism. It was hard to get a fix on the crowd's profile, and while there must have been a few dance aficionados here, it seemed a safe bet that there were plenty of greenhorns present, too.
By and large, it appeared nobody had the first damn clue what the hell was supposed to be happening. But that didn’t really matter: on the stage, cats were dancing in a way that was undeniably modern. And you begin to wonder about the dancers’ lives and minds, about how disciplined they must be, and how strange and noble it is to dedicate themselves to a pursuit that is so left of mainstream.
The dancing fell somewhere between ballet and extremely demanding yoga, and it was pretty clear that the performers were putting their hearts and souls into this: they must practise like gymnasts. The overwhelming atmosphere was of low menace: some of the dancers were in blue jumpsuits, reminiscent of the droogs in A Clockwork Orange, and although there was no ultra-violence here, this was not a serene world.
But it lasted only 25 minutes, which caught all mod.dance virgins unawares: for some reason, I imagined that these performances had to be trials of endurance for both stars and audience.
The second dance, Thank U Ma'am, was a different story. What that story might have been, I am clueless of, but it was good, old fun. When the first, thrilling bars of David Bowie's Heroesfilled the room, for a few seconds everyone was 17 again. The Thin White Duke appeared in cinematic black and white, wearing his leathers and looking unreasonably glam, while on stage, the dancers went through a dreamy routine in time with the pop classic.
Later, Clark appeared solo on stage and engaged in a complex-looking performance with a chair that culminated in his becoming entangled in the prop. He ended up lying face-down and, for one appalling moment, I feared that the poor man was stuck. The last time I had seen anyone stuck in a chair was in a nightclub in Bundoran one winter around 1989, when a sudden, spectacular row broke out. But Clarke was not trapped and skipped lightly off stage.
It was still bright outside when the crowd tumbled out, feeling graceless and inflexible. The whole show lasted a little more than an hour and half, which seemed just about right when it came to modern dance and, strangely, coincided with the end of the football match next door, which Dundalk won easily.
