We sat down for a quick chat with Michael Keegan-Ó Dobhailen about this upcoming show How to be a Dancer in Seventy-two Thousand Easy Lessons coming soon at Sadlers Wells East
How did growing up in 1970s Ireland shape the themes of identity, shame, and defiance that run through How to be a Dancer in Seventy-two Thousand Easy Lessons?
Where you grow up, when you grow up and who you grow up with effects the way your perception functions and how your nervous system and your endocrine system function. In the 70’s, almost every other day someone would be killed in the North of Ireland. In Dublin, we were mostly insulated from the direct horrors of the conflict but it was always in the ether.
In Ireland in the 1970s, there was serious economic instability, widespread unemployment and extensive emigration. Money was scarce. These challenges required of us all to be defiant, my name Dolan, in Irish is Ó Donhailen, meaning the son of the defiant one.
The Catholic Church still ran the country in conjunction with the government, and shame was their primary means of controlling a population who were beginning to free themselves from the oppression of religion and conservatism.
In blending fact and fantasy, history and memory, what truths were you hoping to uncover or destabilize for the audience?
I have no interest in destabilizing anyone, above all the audience who have taken the time and made the effort to come and witness the work we make.
Truth is important but it is not always appreciated. For example from what I understand the education syllabus in England does not explain in much detail the fundamental actions that underpin most Irish people’s (of a certain age) relationship with the English people, their government and their mechanisms of power. It would be useful, in my humble opinion, if more English people knew what Oliver Cromwell and his army did in Ireland, the United Irishmen and their rebellion of 1798, The Famine of 1845-50, the 1916 Easter Rising, the War of Independence etc.
Violence, starvation, oppression and torture are remembered and carried in the sinews and bones of a people. As a dancer, my relationship with my sinews and bone is close and intense. Your history, family, generational and of your people effect the way you stand, the way you walk, the way you dance. How you dance is who you are.
Collaboration is central to this work. How did your long-time partnerships with Rachel Poirier and Adam Silverman influence the piece’s evolution?
Trust. I would trust Rachel and Adam with my life. The depth and quality of that trust enabled me to get back on stage as a performer after 25 years, and talk about subjects that were important to me. Without trust, creativity in a collaborative or communal setting can quickly become superficial. Maybe this is one of the primary reasons why some work can be so superficial. The absence of trust in the room.
The show moves fluidly between ritual, theatre, dance, and music—what drew you to collapsing these boundaries rather than keeping them distinct?
Dance and ritual are bedfellows. Music and Dance are brother and sister, father and mother. Many boundaries are conceptual and created from a place of anxiety and mistrust. By dissolving boundaries we are confronting our anxiety and fear. Fear prevents one from doing things one might like to do. Some boundaries are useful – even necessary – others are conceptual, poisonous and utterly useless.
How do you see the role of Teaċ Daṁsa, rooted in the West Kerry Gaeltacht, in connecting local culture and myth with a global audience?
The Romans never came to Ireland. The myth says that they could not cope with our weather, calling Ireland ‘the land of eternal winter’. The advantage of our bad weather is that Ireland was left out of much of the Romans’ objectivation of the natural world for much longer than the rest of Europe. Therefore the Irish have a stronger, inherent connection to the world of sprit. Spirit is beyond culture, beyond geography. By working where we work and how we work, our role is in some ways to bring some spirit back into the world of dance and theatre.
Looking back, what personal lesson or discovery surprised you most in the making of How to be a Dancer in Seventy-two Thousand Easy Lessons?
How deeply and strongly I was connected to the life of a family member whom I never met and initially knew little about. Never underestimate who or what is driving the chariot. You can mistakenly think that it is you, when in truth, it may not entirely be the