A dancer drags a bag of compost on to the stage and hacks it open with intent. This is not quite a staged memoir from choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan, more an excavation of his roots. As in his dance theatre works such as Giselle, The Bull, Swan Lake and MÁM, Keegan-Dolan here uses emblematic characters and scenes to evoke a period and a generation: while they may not be directly drawn from his own life, they tap into collective memory.
Recalling his childhood with snatches of song and the music that inspired him growing up in Dublin – from Talking Heads to Jacques Brel and Elgar – Keegan-Dolan appears alongside his partner and long time collaborator, the dazzling dancer Rachel Poirier. They take us back to the 1980s, to awkward schooldays, against the background of the hunger strikes and IRA bombings; to Keegan-Dolan’s experiences of violence at the hands of a priest and later of anti-Irish prejudice as a ballet student in London.
