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By Anna M HOLMES
When we enter a theatre it is with expectations. Mine were informed by two previous works I have seen by this company in the past two years: Mám and Nobdodaddy. How To Be A Dancer In Seventy-Two Thousand Easy Lessons sits between these two pieces, in terms of when it was created, but this short run was its UK premiere.
When thinking of Keegan-Dolan’s work, it is of being overwhelmed by the combined power of movement and music exploding from the stage: free-flowing contemporary dance defying gravity; sound – contemporary and Irish-traditional – emanating from musicians. The whole mix and mash of them contributing to the jamboree. Mám and Nobdodaddy were presented at Sadler’s Wells. This production was at Sadler’s Wells East. It is a new, more intimate theatre, with seating for 570, but has a stage the same size as it’s Islington parent theatre. It can do ‘Big’ if it wants to, but How To Be A Dancer is intimate: a two-hander biographical piece.
Keegan-Dolan narrated his journey into dance – a reliable, or perhaps, unreliable narrator – while Poirier contributed most of the dancing. As to the credited lighting designer, Adam Silverman, there is little to say. The design was functional but nothing out of the ordinary.
All Photos:Teaċ Daṁsa, How To Be A Dancer In Seventy-Two Thousand Easy Lessons © Fiona Morgan
On stage, the couple played with random props removed from a wooden chest which was itself a time-capsule of sorts. Shoes, a bicycle, dartboard and darts all appeared, and stories unfolded. Tales from Keegan-Dolan’s growing up in an Irish society that is barely recognisable today. He reminisced about his first associations with sex being “soap and water” and how he had practiced kissing his wallpaper. We heard of his audition for Belgium minimalist choreographer Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker, which did not go well… and more.
Poirier is a charismatic performer: dancer (and singer). In their previous productions, with a stage full of mostly younger performers, my eye would be drawn to her. Here, she was the one giving the dance-satisfaction. “Watch this”, she told us, and while her husband propped up the wooden chest, she launched into a 15-minute solo to Ravel’s Bolero with the soundtrack coming from an onstage cassette player. Masterly!
How To Be A Dancer was witty, entertaining, well-presented, and the audience – perhaps two thirds full, loved it, with many offering a standing ovation at the end. My companion was reminded of earlier witty dance-theatre performances by another married couple, Valda Setterfield and David Gordon, whom we saw decades ago at Dance Umbrella performances in the early 1980s when UK audiences were starved of new happenings in dance. We lapped it up then, and this audience opened their arms to this couple.
Towards the end of the show, Keegan-Dolan told us how exciting it had been to be at Sadler’s Wells and experience waves of energy lifting off the dancers towards the audience and that energy lifted back to the dancers.
That is precisely what I anticipated experiencing but did not.
What little information there was, said this was a production by Teaċ Daṁsa, yet this was not the company. I love small-scale work (reference those long-ago collaborations between Setterfield and Gordan) and have watched flamenco dancer Israel Galvan interpret The Rite of Spring, just him with two pianists and props. I think of the thrill of Sylvie Guillem’s solo show, and those many ballet productions performed by ‘Members of xx company.’ You know what to expect. The brand is intact. I have also seen big multi-disciplinary companies diminished due to lack of funding, move from thrilling massive site-specific productions to small, carefully curated pieces that were created because they were possible within budget constraints.
How To Be A Dancer was a co-production with the Gate Theatre, Dublin. I have since read that it was created during the Covid Pandemic. If so, then maybe they adapted to those difficult times by creating what they could, how they could, but I do wish that Sadler’s Wells East, and company, had made more effort to contextualise this work.
Is How To Be A Dancer In Seventy-Two Thousand Easy Lessons worth it? Yes. We were charmed by Keegan-Dolan and Poirier, enjoying the interplay of these two partners in both life and stagecraft. Poirier’s glorious burst of Bolero-inspired creativity was, in itself, worth the ticket price.
