Spreading across the city in open air-performances, installations and re-purposed performance spaces, Cork Midsummer festival returns with an impressively ambitious programme of new work. Responding to global environmental disasters and displacement by war, many of the productions invite audiences to lift their gaze from their immediate concerns and imagine themselves in another person’s skin.
In a warehouse by the docks (Warehouse @Marina Market) Company Philip Connaughton presents a new dance theatre work, Trojans, a thrillingly contemporary response to Virgil’s epic, The Aeneid. Surrounded by four enormous screens, dancers hurl themselves fearlessly on a bare concrete floor, jostling, rolling and clambering over each other in jolting sequences of movement. Fleeing war, on a voyage to what may be a new homeland, they are tested to see if they can survive the gruelling journey and hold on to a belief in a cause bigger than themselves. Carrying each other, walking on each other’s backs and lifting their queen (Joanna Banks) proudly on their shoulders, this international group of performers – Sheik Bah, Vitor Bassi, Alexandra Karcakova, Sarah Ryan, Anna Kaszuba and Dmitry Vinokurov – form a riveting ensemble. Connaughton’s direction maintains an emotional pitch throughout, enhanced by Luca Truffarelli’s confrontational video design and composer Oberman Knocks’ electronica score.
