Dance
Concert
Tramway, Glasgow
Mary Brennan
five stars
For a performance that harbours a wealth of beguiling complexities, Concert starts off in a sweetly easy-oasy fashion - yer man, Colin Dunne, is telling us that Irish step-dance is just that: taking steps. He demonstrates. Forward and back on the spot. Simples. But then, in a sudden twinkle, he’s crossing his ankles and the flashes of technique - so beloved of audiences who saw him in Riverdance - start coming to the fore. Dunne, however, is on a very particular, even personal, quest here. After repeatedly listening to the fiddle-playing of the late Tommy Potts on an iconic LP - The Liffey Banks (1972) - Dunne’s whole creative being has been teased into action by the free-spirited rhythmic irregularities that flow from Potts’ bow. You could say that Dunne and Potts are kindred spirits, itching to revitalise the bone-marrow energies of traditional Irish music and dance by being bold and inventive with the riffs and rhythms they have at their virtuosic fingertips, and feet.
Concert is, then, like a merry-bantering conversation between them. Dunne - sometimes barefoot, sometimes in hard-soled shoes - becomes the living bridge between the past and present, his own intricate footwork matching or counterpointing the shifts of mood and time signatures in Potts’ music-making. But the interaction in this caringly researched and unstintingly delivered production goes much further, thanks to the sound design of Mel Mercier and supportive direction of Sinead Rushe. Archive video footage brings Potts himself into the room, his voice (cannily edited) even commenting approvingly on Dunne’s dancing. Dunne’s shoes meanwhile are ‘miked up’ so as his fleet, syncopated taps can be mediated and mixed into an increasingly futuristic wash of sound that - when it whooshes like a wind of change - has an elemental mystery to it. Suddenly, tradition is no longer hide-bound but evolving in the here and now - taking steps that, like Potts’ fiddle-playing, have a fresh appeal in them.
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