Fringe Dance

Mary Brennan

NuShu

Four Stars

Your Own Man/Mad Notions

Four Stars

Unknown

Four Stars

&

Liminal

Three Stars

All at Dance Base

THOUGH NuShu was a secretive coded script – used exclusively by women in Hunan, China to record their most private thoughts – the performance, by Water Reflection Dance Company (from Taiwan), that bears its name openly spells out what those codes were about: loss, mostly, of self, happiness and inner peace because of always putting duty to family first. This is a poignant choreography of memories conjured from the heart and mind of one woman – danced and sung by the choreographer, Hui-Chen Tan, herself. And though her creative imagination draws on traditional forms, as well as contemporary movement, there is no cultural divide. We recognise the happy games, the friendships of childhood, just as we can also read the pain of separation when an (arranged) marriage distances the woman from all she holds dear. All that remains is her writing. But by the end, with red-shrouded figures clustered round her, she has surrendered even that... perhaps the red will bring her better fortune in the afterlife.

This is a truly exquisite piece. Even without the clever design elements – a red “table” that fragments into smaller sections as if echoing the different parts of the woman’s life – NuShu would be a pleasure to watch simply because of the dancers. They catch every shift of time, place and mood with their lithely expressive bodies. At one point, a long white ribbon, attached to an ankle, symbolises the trail of memories that follow us – NuShu is a performance to add to your own ribbon.

MEMORIES are also tugging at the heels of Luke Murphy, drawing him back home even though he’s long left Cork and made his way as a dancer/choreographer in America. He has the blarney to charm us all with anecdotes – often self-deprecating – about his professional career and social life there. He’s prone to gaffes with the opposite sex, is yer man. Luckily his feet, and his body, can talk volumes of unmistakeable sincerity when issues of conflicted emotions arise, and he’s searching in himself – and among the people and situations around him – for what shapes and informs your identity. In the middle of Your Own Man/Mad Notions, there’s a film of him dancing, barefoot, in various locations: on cobbled street, in train carriage, on tussocks and on loam. There’s no shoe leather to come between him and the feel of the “oul’ sod” on his soles – ah, would you look at the way the earth is squeezing up over his toes, as if to pull him back. But is there ever any going back? The “you” that goes back is not the one that left, the one that kith and kin remember, and long to reclaim. Murphy’s fierce, fine solo is full of that hapless schism between past and present and though there’s humour in what he shows, there’s an ache too, in being your own man.

EVE Mutso decided, earlier this year, to be her own dancer. Bade farewell to her career as a highly-prized Principal with Scottish Ballet and stepped into the solo, Unknown. On-stage, this state of uncertainty is made manifest with Mutso initially inside a triangular “cage” that’s just wide enough for those long-limbed extensions she holds with such poise. But the need to push beyond what is both a security and a limitation sees her travelling into the darkness all around, her black costume making her part of its shadows – but her pale limbs, shining blonde hair, lead our eyes towards movement that isn’t afraid to jitter, even flinch, before her undiminished physical prowess asserts itself in wonderful, stretching back-bends and arabesques – still infused with classical technique but, like Mutso, in honest search for new directions.

Liadain Herriott’s Liminal – paired with Unknown in a double bill – was similarly rooted in a breakaway from classical training into...well, it was hard to see what, since a technical glitch kept the necessary light source (in its pink lampshade) from descending. As the music switched between Handel, electronic beats, Tchaikovsky, so Herriott – face rouged like a little doll – was pulled every which way between balletic lines, modern free-styles and simply finding the balance to stand still. When more light is shed on her, Liminal will juxtapose nicely with Unknown.