The scene is a mix of elements: circus, film noir, Charlie Chaplin and Beckett. A man struggles in a bath of sand. A woman slowly disengages herself from a pair of wings, which are nailed to a cross. Another woman is trapped in a water-tank. They are observed by a fat man as he sips his drink, far above.
These figures enact choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan's metaphors for the fragility of life. The show, entitled Fragile, was inspired by the death of his brother from cancer: "My brother died when he was 32. I thought he was immortal. When you realise cool people can die, it makes you re-evaluate everything."Fragile came from dreams and daydreams I had in the years following his death. I was also inspired by a 17th-century painting by Salvator Rosa called Human Fragility, which shows a beautiful woman with a new-born baby overlooked by a skeletal angel of death."
Returning from an outing at the Uzes Festival de la Nouvelle Danse in France, Fragile(first performed at the Dublin Fringe Festival in 1999) is revived at Project this week (June 26th-30th).
"Going to France has been a great vindication: it's our first big appearance abroad," says Keegan-Dolan, who founded his company, Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre, in 1997. Only two Irish companies were invited to Uzes (which focused this year on British and Irish dance): Fabulous Beast and Rex Levitates.
Keegan-Dolan (32) has a mercurial, animated face sometimes lit up with an infectious smile, other times sinking into weariness. "What we do is dance theatre, telling a story that is humanist, not movement for its own sake," he explains. "Fragile is a loose rather than a chronological narrative. It has a surrealistic meaning."
The variety of styles concocted by Keegan-Dolan for Fabulous Beast can be seen by comparing Fragile with the more recent show, Flowerbed. "Some of our Dublin audiences found Fragile a bit inaccessible. So I decided to come up with something more accessible to a wider audience," says Keegan-Dolan. "I nicked the shape of Romeo and Juliet and linked it to the rise of territorialism in Dublin, which is petty and funny, with neighbours rowing over a bit of fence." The result begins ordinarily enough, with two very different suburban families living cheek by jowl, but soon the action unravels to depict a characteristically grotesque underbelly of obsession, absurdity and thwarted love.
Keegan-Dolan explains: "There has to be a message to move people forward, we aren't only interested in entertainment. We want people to observe themselves and come away with something." Telling a story without words is important for Keegan-Dolan for a variety of reasons, not least as a reaction against the Irish preference for text-based theatre: "Dance theatre has a wider appeal. You don't need translations, so the options for touring are greater. But more importantly, what we do is visceral, it speaks to the body, and to the collective unconscious. This is vital in today's society which is so led by the frontal brain, where all people do is sit in front of computers."
The downside is that presenting a very different kind of performance in Ireland can be disheartening: "In a text-led culture like Ireland's, when a young writer produces a new play, there is loads of media attention and a good infrastructure of support. That just isn't there for young choreographers.
"And I don't just mean in Ireland. I've been based in London for the last 12 years, and it isn't that different there. If you aren't using text you are seen as some how less intelligent." It is important to Keegan-Dolan to appear intelligent. He jokes: "Here, can you make me look like an egg-head? I don't just mean because I've shaved my hair off." The youngest of six, he comes from a Dublin family of doctors and lawyers: "I was supposed to go to TCD and study law". Becoming a dancer instead at first seemed unlikely, because he was born with pronated (turned-in) toes, and had to wear his shoes on the wrong feet for years. "When I was seven, my mother took me to the pantomime and I saw the Billie Barrie dance troupe. I wanted to join." His mother resisted, so he didn't get to realise his ambition until he was 17. At that stage, he had begun studying break-dancing and strutting his stuff at his local club, the Grove disco: "I thought, 'I want to do this, I'm good'." But he soon realised the Billie Barrie experience "wasn't the real thing", so he joined Dublin Youth Theatre and took ballet and contemporary dance classes at Digges Lane.
"I'm an absolutely awful dancer," Keegan-Dolan declares, laughing. Referring to the small number of men who train as dancers, he insists: "I got work only because I've got a penis." Rachel Lopez de la Nieta, who attended the Central School of Ballet in London with Keegan-Dolan and now dances in all his shows, disagrees: "You're a great mover."
For Keegan-Dolan, "dance ended my life as a normal person". His dance career only lasted five years, but his work as a choreographer has progressed in leaps and bounds. In addition to running his own dance company, he is constantly in demand, mostly as a movement director for opera. Forthcoming projects include Faust at the Royal Opera House and Ariodante at the Houston Opera in Texas. He has choreographed a number of other productions including Sir Peter Hall's Oedipus Plays for the Royal National Theatre, and he completed the choreography of Carousel at the Royal National Theatre after the death of Sir Kenneth MacMillan in 1992. He has won several awards, including the Paul Hamlyn Choreographic Award and the Peter Darrell Choreographic Award.
His earnings from these lucrative, high-profile jobs now go into keeping Fabulous Beast afloat: "It is hard to make a living working with Fabulous Beast. I can go to Germany and make a great fee, which I then use to subsidise our work." The company received a grant of £60,000 from the Arts Council this year, which was very welcome, but only enough for essentials: "After the expense of reviving Fragile and taking it to France, we were left with only £20,000 to work on our next show," explains Keegan-Dolan.
He is grateful to Kathy McArdle, artistic director of Project, who has provided the company with an office space. "We have been invited to festivals like UzΦs before, but we were never able to go, because we had no money, no office, no facilities to even rehearse a show." Now in addition to an office at Project, the company has a new manager, Nick Costello.
The new show Keegan-Dolan is devising - about the loss of childhood innocence - "will include a counter tenor playing Santa Claus and frying eggs. I also want to get the entire transition year from my old school, St Paul's in Raheny." He explains his method of creation: "I get visions and then I go to Rachel and tell her about them. She says either they are crap, or inspired, and I carry on from there. She is my sounding-board." Rachel Lopez de la Nieta enjoys the collaborative nature of this formula: "It's exciting, it gives us loads of room to explore."
Keegan-Dolan tries, as far as possible, "to make democratic work". His dancers are hand-picked and not local. "I have trouble finding the right people," he says. "They need acting ability and creativity as well as technical strength. There is talent in Ireland, but the dancers who stay here aren't necessarily getting the range of experience I find exciting." And his sources of inspiration? Circus, yes, and a lot of films, including the work of Jane Campion and the Coen Brothers. But also "growing up in Clontarf, my mother, my opera work - people like designer Paul Steinberg and director David Alden - and just life, the way people and animals interact."
