Review-Rian-Hong Kong Arts Fest
5-3-13
By: Tom Hope
It’s not clear quite why (for possible reasons, see here), but it’s a cultural imperative of near-biblical power that Irish dancers dance with their arms at their side while their feet are going a mile a minute.
The devisers of Rian want to break that mould. At the heart of this show is Irish folk music – and Irish folk musicians whose skill with pipes, fiddle, whistle, bozouki, guitar, concertina and keyboards is breathtakingly brilliant – to which a group of traditionally garbed men (in 1930s suits) and women (in gingham dresses) dance in a ring (or Rian). But there are no step-dancers here. They use their arms a lot. They wave their feet in the air. They make the occasional kick into space. But it’s mostly with no shoes on – and not once does a tap on the floor occur.
The floor is vivid green, as a village green might be in the Emerald Isle. There’s a raised rim of green ‘bank’ in a hemisphere on which the performers – musicians and dancers all – sit when not in the Rian. The cyclorama that envelopes this ‘green’ is also green, from the floor to the flies. From beginning to end of the show.
So this is a show that’s steeped in Irishness – and green-ness. At times, it’s a darker shade of green, as the lighting dims so the dancers’ shadows are projected by bright footlights onto the cyc – their arms, their heads, their upwardly mobile feet. But most of the time it’s a straightforward brightly lit (albeit green) frame for a straightforward joyous celebration of movement to music, creating (as the programme quotes choreographer Keegan-Dolan of theatre dance troupe Fabulous Beast) a ‘rooted space – elegant and understated, domestic and civic… forging a new way into the music… to leave aside the percussive precision and chorus line ceili of Riverdance and its tributaries’.
Is that enough to maintain a 90 minute (no intermission) performance? Last Saturday night, for most of the audience, it seemed to be, as they stood and shouted and hand-clapped the cast back for an encore – an encore with a difference as music director Liam O Maonlai gave the audience a ‘note’ which we droned back to him as he sang (solo) a lilting Gaelic valedictory ballad.
For this crusty old critic, it wasn’t. After 20 minutes or so, as the choreography repeated itself over and over, I found it duller and duller to see the same moves and formations, with little variation of style and little sense of development. The music styles shifted to the middle east and then to Mali, tieing together the rhythmical and melodic patterns in ever more engaging love-knots. The dancers however remained resolutely ‘rooted’ in a looping reiteration of sweeping arms and shifting feet as they danced in and out of the ring, together or solo. There were moments when an injection of something new seemed possible – the dancers ‘attacking’ the musicians, or the musicians joining the dance, or the entire company sitting in a row of chairs as their swaying outlines created an eerie shadow tapestry on the cyc behind. But these moments moved nowhere but back to the Rian and a joyous celebratory resumption of the same abstracted contemporary dance patterns.
I’ve said it already and I’ll say it again – the musicians are brilliant and the music they made breathtaking. To see as well as hear them make movement ‘happen’ through the kinetics of their performance was magical. But ‘Rian’ purports to be more than just a virtuoso musical concert. If you like dance that puts you in a trance like state by its repetitive application to a variety of musical styles, this could be just the thing for you. For me, it was just the one thing that disappointed in what was otherwise a serendipitously special evening.
This performance of Rian has closed. For more information, click here.
Comments
ballet_girl
If you don't like Irish Dance then why did you go? This review reeks of I knew I was going to hate it and I did. Seems unfair to the dancers.
05 March 2013person
I completely agree with ballet_girl's comment above.
05 March 2013Jess
I thought both the music and dance were very well executed. Yes, the dance is not your typical Riverdance, but that is the beauty of it. This show educates and breaks the stereotype that all Irish dancing is the same.
05 March 2013