An awful lot has happened to Oona Doherty since she rolled out of the boot of a car to perform Hope Hunt and the Ascension into Lazarus, a short solo about working-class masculinity. That was first performed in 2015 and the piece was the precursor to Hard to Be Soft: A Belfast Prayer, a 2019 hymn to the soul of her home town of Belfast. Both announced her as a major talent in contemporary dance.
Since then, she’s had a baby, worked a lot on the continent, been awarded the Silver Lion at the Venice Dance Biennale, made two dance films (one of which is a horror film inspired by pregnancy) and choreographed Navy Blue, a 55-minute piece that reflects some of the tension and preoccupation she is feeling. Essentially, it’s a work of dance that questions the whole point of making dance, which makes it unsettling to watch.
Presented at Sadler’s Wells as part of Dance Umbrella, it opens with a line of dancers (credited with co-collaboration) on an empty stage, in navy blue work suits, moving in unison to Rachmaninov. Their differing heights and shapes mean that their actions aren’t quite in harmony, but they are simultaneously balletically graceful and weighted with anxiety. The dancers constantly pause, watchful, tense. A shot rings out and one falls to the floor, where they are surrounded in a pool of blue light.
Soon everyone has been brought down but, in the moments in between, the survivors reassemble, gather together for support and then dance, gloriously, their arms raised, their hands fluttering as if to catch a piece of sky. Panic sweeps over them, but they persist. When they all lie dead, silence falls and ripples sweep the stage. Then they pull themselves up and the piece begins again.
Now, to a louring soundtrack by Jamie xx, they are standing in a line at the front of the stage, while Doherty – in voiceover – begins to talk. Her words revolve around the horror of the world, the insignificance of individuals in the universe, and she recounts the cost of mounting a production of this size before asking plaintively: “And what’s the point? Who is it for and what will it do?”
When someone raises such profound doubts about their own dance work, the impact is to make you, sitting in the dark, feel conflicted too. Are you wasting your time in a theatre when you could be out there saving the world? Or even just having a cup of tea at home? It’s a valid question and there’s something refreshing to hear a choreographer asking it so directly.
The danger is that it makes you pull away in nihilistic agreement. If Doherty doesn’t have the courage of her convictions, why should we bother to try to make sense of what she is saying? But then the dance opens up again, frantic, twitching movement that seems to defy the negativity and darkness around it, battering, staggering steps that move onwards. “We will do unimportant things and those things, thank goodness, will matter,” Doherty announces. Case made and answered.
Perhaps now she has got her doubts out of the way she will simply sail forward into the future. Art needs passionate artists and there is no doubt that she is one. She simply has to believe.
