Love Songs review: Sorrow, loss and ambiguity

LOVE SONGS

Cork Opera House

★★★☆☆

The timelessness of grief is an uneasy fact of human life, and the enduring bewilderment of sorrow is expressed with pathos and some ambiguity in Love Songs, created and directed by Philip Connaughton. The ambiguity comes from rival expressions of loss enacted in vigorous dance as the apparent contrasts of movement and theme enrich, through narration, song and imagery, what is a personal examination of mourning.

Connaughton has taken some bold decisions for this piece, where his 11-strong company of dancers performs a choreography ranging through broad showbiz chorus-line routines charged with thumping rhythms to antic gyrations suggesting drug-fuelled psychosis and rage.

If his folks could see him now is part of the wistful motivation that interrogates Connaughton’s self-examination, a questioning that also challenges social norms through violence and exclusion. It may be time to start living, as an introductory song from Helen Jordan announces, but the textual content makes it clear that time is running down.

An element of the fascination of this often colourful piece is the subtlety of its references, although the nod to Hal, the artificial-intelligence controller in Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey, comes as a strong reminder of a world changing, and not for the better. There are forgivable instances when the otherwise dependable choreographic collaboration with the dancers gives a hint of improvisation.

The rationale for moving from Dublin to commuter counties has never been stronger

---

Michael Palin on the loss of his wife of 57 years: ‘you feel you’ll never have a friend as close as that’

---

Extreme male grooming: Why are young men embracing damaging beauty ideals?

---

John Magnier’s Coolmore pays €8.925m for 591 acres in Tipperary

---

At other times the ensemble, united in style by Emily Ní Bhroin’s costumes, moves with fluid artistry through Molly O’Cathain’s set, which is itself gorgeously lit by Begoña Garcia. Sound design by Luca Truffarelli emphasises an impetus a little too strong for the 50 minutes it takes for Connaughton’s related, or at least interlinked, queries to be debated, but even this short journey declares, again, his confidence in contemporary dance as an explicit and exciting genre.