As You Are/Faun

SEONA MAC RÉAMOINNreviews As You Are/Faun at the Project, Dublin

At the moment when the ensemble of splendid dancers in this world premiere are transformed into not one but six faun-like creatures, seated diagonally on stage in that iconic pose, faces inclined to that imagined apocryphal afternoon summer sky, it became clear that choreographer David Bolger had brought it off. Yes, a bow to the master Nijinsky's L'Apres-midi d'un Faune, but brilliantly very much his own work.

The original 11-minute ballet, which mesmerised and shocked the 1912 Paris audience, has been extended into a subtle reflective gloss, and performed with the languor, spirit and intention that Stephane Mallarmé's original poem had inspired in Nijinsky the choreographer and the composer Debussy. That ballet defined modernism in dance, even while others defied its success or railed against Nijinsky's sexual candour with the nymph's scarf or his graceless movement.

Here Bolger's trademark humour is adroitly used to give a contemporary cultural context (mimicking a poor stand-up comedy routine) where the shock of the new no longer holds. The six dancers – James Hosty, Eddie Kay, Megan Kennedy, Robert Jackson, Lisa McLoughlin and Emma O'Kane – were engrossing to watch, as their bodies carried not just the story and the mood, but the very history of change in dance gesture. The fully flat jumps, the angular arms and attitudes, bare extended limbs, are all seamlessly woven.

Ivan Birthistle and Vincent Doherty melded the sounds of the rippling piano, the pipes gently calling and Freddy Mercury's anthem for Queen, I Want to Break Free, recalled his donning of a faun costume (no doubt both in homage and in mischief).

The contemporary inferences are also enhanced by the two-way mirrored backdrop set and lighting, which allows us to see through a glass darkly, hinting at voyeurism and yearning. There is luscious sensuality and seduction in the air as men and women, nymphs or fauns, collide, embrace, tenderly and provocatively, and softly caress to ecstasy. What was so wonderfully elicited was a dreamlike stillness: an undulating pelvis, an arched torso, a head thrown back, now all in post-coital, satisfied quietness. It was compellingly human.

The prelude in this double-bill was also a cry against conformity, in Muirne Bloomer's As You Are, her Coiscéim debut as choreographer. Here the versatile ensemble embodied the jerky robotic figures, part comic-book superheroes, part video-game automatons. They play for individual identity, but also are drawn to the controlled ease of uniformity as the sinister controller/toymaker winds them up in every sense.

Runs until Jan 23rd, then tours to Galway, Thurles, Waterford, Cork, Longford, Dún Laoghaire, Portlaoise, Tallaght and Wexford