Fragments review: Beautiful, well-judged dance

FRAGMENTS

The Complex
★ ★ ★ ★
After two years of research and work-in-progress showings, the conceptual premise for Fragments has been reduced to a distilled essence. No slam-dunk answers, either: Jessie Keenan's beautiful and well-judged dance feels like a single spun-out question about how we read and remember movement and gesture. Super 8 family footage is projected in the beginning, a reminder of her grandfather's dementia, but movement trumps theatricality throughout.

Marion Cronin, Siobhán Ní Dhuinnín and Sarah Ryan are impressively sustained in slowly unravelling recurring phrases, from obsessive clothes-tugging to lying on their backs, arms and legs floating upwards. By dancing more as three individuals than as a trio, they make moments of coalescence more satisfying, such as a shared sudden soft impulse, or by slowly aligning into a straight diagonal. Alongside the crafted choreography, Irene Buckley’s soundscape and Matt Burke’s lighting design are both restrained and supportive.

Runs until Friday, September 14th