Dance review | Flamenco to reality TV at the Dublin Dance festival

Edad de Oro- Israel Galvan ****
Blanca ****
Re-Presenting Ireland ***
Triple Bill***
Double Bill ***

Hybrid worlds continued to unfold through the final week of the Dublin Dance Festival. From the Andalusian plains of flamenco to the TV reality shows and the snowy terrain of northern Scandinavia, performers and choreographers gave us modern twists on classic concepts and responses to music. Splashes of visual magic, ironic humour and youthful exuberance illuminated theatres and open spaces. And this accomplished fringe strand - often entertaining, if not radical - has undoubtedly contributed to the continued increase in audiences for this festival under outgoing director Julia Carruthers.

Pulsating rhythm was nowhere more evident than in the bravura performance of flamenco artist Israel Galván and his Edad de Oro. A disconcerting showman style start soon gave way to a mesmerising concert performance of a Golden Age of Flamenco. Galván’s whole body became his percussive instrument. His fingers castanetted and thrummed from cheekbone to flicked heel, while his feet scuffed and pawed the ground like a restless stallion. Macho staccato struts developed into intense dialogues and duels with the floor of the stage, his own shadow but most eloquently with the fusion of accompanying fine guitarist Alfredo Lagos and singer David Lagos. Movement was unembellished, but melded with a contemporary fluency.

Trademark haughtiness was matched with self-irony (he switched to a pair of gleaming white shoes, resting one gently on a chair for perusal by the audience.) Grand knowing gestures; the knife edge spins , dramatic body arching or frenzied careening across the stage, were counterpointed with miniature almost lyrical moves. Even the highly controlled abrupt stops were as arresting as the photo finish of a horse race as though Galvan’s emotional engine suddenly has been switched off. The passion and wildness of flamenco were pervasive; sometimes he paused, knees bent like a bird poised for flight or with the thunderous voice and music rising to a crescendo, the dancer’s body launched in full throttle, part animal, part human and we witnessed the evocation of the duende, that distilled emotional spirit emanating from authentic gypsy flamenco.

The heat and dust of flamenco terrain is a planet away from the snowy darkness evoked in Blanca, a completely absorbing solo from Maria Nilsson Waller. This meditative, entrancing work drawing on the culture and struggles of the indigenous Sami people of northern Scandinavia was created and performed by Waller with an eerie electronic soundscape composed and played live by Magnus Vikberg. Yet it was also work of visual magic as the dancer’s body and movement were swathed in a magnetic 3D visual design of José Miguel Jiménez drawing the performer and audience into its spinning gyres of black and white, darkness and light.

So much was finely suggested in this coherent mix of dance, music and image; an Arctic terrain with hibernating darkness or the sudden blinding white brightness , snow as protector and enemy with delicate snowflakes careering gently followed by engulfing avalanches . We sensed the struggles of nature and humans as Wallers’s body became a canvas for Jiménez and Vikberg; emerging tendrils of plants or dense snow laden forests, an enormous nuclear style explosion of sound and distorted image left Waller’s body prone. The shifting and dissolving images, sound and dance evoked a familiar conflict of traditional and modern; the disco beat of encroaching urbanisation counterpointed with a puddle of blood seeping on the screen; indigenous peoples and culture hunting for survival while anxiously seeking identity.

Some of these anxieties seemed to pervade many of the solo pieces abounding in the festival. Young dancers and choreographers are now transients working across borders and cultures, an experience which leads to questions about identity, home, time, self, community. Luke Murphy’s Your Own Man/Mad Notions ( Re-Presenting Ireland) brooding on cultural identity as he joined an imaginary Irish pub quiz was on point while Lucia Kickham’s inventive solo In This Now, from the same platform, showed a concern about the wasting and passing of time. Indeed restless questioning clawed at the choreography in all of “The Triple Bill”. Israeli born Meytk Blanaru and Italian Claudia Catarzi were watchable performers but they were strongly edged out in impact by the more accomplished Thomas Hauert. His Bitter/Sweet explored the concept of impossible love in an interplay again with the body, music and technology as he danced and deliberated, to the strains of a baroque Monteverdi . His moves were constantly interrogating as he sought to find equilibrium with himself and the music. Doggedly he rearranged the space, the neon strip lighting, the pace, even his clothing but to no avail.

Hopeless love is timeless, while searching for connection has become an affliction of the modern age. Both were wittily and athletically articulated in Tabea Martin’s Field which formed part of “Double Bill’ .This was a deft, smart-ass work for three dancers performed here by her trio of young, lithe, technically fine dancers Stephanie Bale, Luca Cacitti and Carl Staaf. They mined the concept of togetherness and separation, equality and “the three into two won’t go” conundrum and they gave it their best shot. Bodies, hugged, cleaved and wrapped, lips and limbs insinuated themselves around each other, and the spaces in between at marvellous frenetic speed, All to a Sixties throwback choice from their eclectic 100 Best Love Songs playlist - Happy Together by The Turtles.

Back in the 1960s it was all about experiment and the people’s revolution. In the age of the internet and YouTube, the technology revolution is taking over the people. Fantasy and reality blur. Pantastic by Deirdre Griffin (Re-Presenting Ireland) was a slick duet for dancer and frying pan, a domestic goddess mirroring her TV heroine, while BOKKO - The Ultimate Fusion one of the festival’s last offerings, took this concept to dizzy heights. This was both a hilarious recreation and an ironic deconstruction of a South Korean dance craze, conceived and performed with detailed surreal accuracy by Karel Van Laere and Vanja Rukavina.