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<b>conceived & directed by John McColgan, music by Brian Byrne
Moya Doherty, Ed Mirvish Theatre, Toronto
January 25-March 2, 2014
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“The music whispered chances new
The night I danced with you”
<i>Heartbeat of Home</i> from the creators of the Irish stepdancing phenomenon <i>Riverdance</i>, has just launched its North American tour in Toronto. Any who expect <i>Heartbeat</i> to be simply more of the same is in for a surprise. The new show is defiantly <i>not</i> more of the same. Gone are the Celtic mythological trappings. Instead, the show looks at Ireland and its dance in an international context and shows how the vocabulary of stepdancing can expand through contact with the dance traditions of other cultures. The show is not a nostalgic look at the past but a glimpse of the new multicultural Ireland of the present bursting with energy and promise.
Choreographer David Bolger told the <i>Irish Examiner</i> shortly before the show’s world premiere, “It’s a modern, outwards-looking Ireland. Riverdance started something, this takes up where that ended. This is Ireland now. We are at a point when we can celebrate our commonality as much as our unique differences.”
The show begins as if it were a continuation of <i>Riverdance</i> (1995) with Irish stepdancers, arms down, upper body stiff, but feet at work doing complex step patterns punctuated by the occasional leap straight upwards or high kick. When the matrices of men and women cross the stage past each other, they reveal in succession a flamenco dance couple, two Latin ballroom couples and a trio of Afro-Cuban dancers. The stepdancers finish the number in familiar <i>Riverdance</i> style by forming a line stretching the entire length of the stage opening.
After an interlude featuring the uilleann pipes (Irish bagpipes) played beautifully by Lottie Cullen, the next dance number is completely different. Six dancers, barefoot, none of them Irish stepdancers, form into three couples, one of them two men, to perform duets in the style of modern dance – arms raised, limbs flowing, one partner lifting the other. Bolger sets out these two styles as two extremes. A soft shoe stepdance number, led by the sprightly female lead dancer Ciara Sexton, serves to relate the hardshoe numbers with barefoot modern dance and trainer-shod Afro-Cuban dance. Strangely enough, when Irish stepdancing is done in soft shoes, our focus shifts from the dancers’ feet to their bodies as a whole, just as it does in the other forms of dance. The show then proceeds to showcase not just national styles but to explore in quite innovative ways the exciting territory that lies between them. We have an <i>a cappella</i> hardshoe stepdance number, a flamenco number and a salsa number, but we also have a waltz and the reel that ends Act 1, where members member of the four groups mingle.
Act 1 alone shows we’re not in the world of <i>Riverdance</i> anymore. There Flamenco and American tap were presented in isolated numbers as examples of other styles of stepdancing. Here choreographer David Bolger coordinates his work with that of Irish dance choreographer John Carey. The other dance forms are presented from the beginning and expanding on the waltz and reel of Act 1, the choreographers use Act 2 to show Irish dance interacting with non-Irish dance.
You can hardly miss this point when Act 2 begins with lead Irish dancer Bobby Hodges doing a short rap number. The rapping is promptly taken over by the sweet-voiced lead vocalist Lucia Evans, who unspools a list of Irish town names in alphabetical order then subtly shifts to Latin American city names and back. Meanwhile, four groups of performers all take turns in reacting to the beat, including the stepdancers. Flamenco dancers Rocío Montoya and Stefano Domit combine stately carriage with rapid-fire heelwork. Afro-Cuban dancers Teneisha Bonner, Kieran Donovan and Renako McDonald fuse hip-hop with acrobatics in an incredible number where they seem to be limbo dancing without a pole. Latin dancers Clare Craze, Curtis Angus, Vanessa Guevara and Angelo Gioffré demonstrate a complex tango with all the between-leg kicks and varied lifts and drops you could wish. As in the waltz in Act 1, dancers from all groups come together in the tango adapting their different styles to the rhythm. The scene finishes with dances to drums. First is the handheld Irish bodhrán, from which Robbie Harris produces an unbelievably varied number of sounds. Then dancers enter playing larger Afro-Cuban djembes, two more with huge South American bombas climaxing with Japanese taiko drums rolled in on stands. The gradual inclusion of drums from around the world all playing together while the dancers all dance together could hardly be a stronger symbol of the international world view that the <i>Heartbeat of Home</i> seeks to promote.
A glance at the programme shows that Ireland is no long the sole provider of Irish dancers. Of the 18-member Irish dance troupe, only five are from Ireland. Three are from Canada, four are from Australia and the rest are from the UK and US. The three Afro-Cuban dancer are all from the UK. The four Latin dancers hail from the UK, Mexico and Italy. Only the two flamenco dancers are both from Spain. The makeup of the cast proves the point that the show makes that once-national dance form no longer belong to any one country.
The principal problem with <i>Heartbeat</i> as opposed to <i>Riverdance</i> is that <i>Heartbeat</i> is overproduced. Alan Farquharson’s set splits the 10-member band into two computer-controlled stands that can move to face each other or line up side by side. Usually the are on opposite sides of the stage with a short set of stairs in between them. All three units are backed with large-sail-like screen where David Torpey’s images are projected. For far too much of the show Torpey projects moving images that smack of the artificiality of CGI. It is really a mistake to project moving images behind dancers since it is a constant distraction. In dance the dancers themselves should provide the only motion on stage.
The one time Torpey’s projections are effective is in a scene in Act 2 that recreates the famous 1932 photo “Men at Lunch” by Charles C. Ebbets showing eleven construction workers sitting having lunch on a girder projecting from the 69th floor of the RCA Building. Torpey’s projection moves us upward as if on a construction elevator and stops when the stairs at the back have swung round with eight dancers on top. Here the flamenco lead, Stefano Domit initiates a competition to see who can dance the most rapidly in place. He performs with incredible rapidity and precision, but Bobby Hodges fires back with amazing footwork that includes multiple in-air heel clicking. The scene works so well because, for once, Torpey does not have the projection move during the dancing once he has set the scene.
A second problem, familiar from Broadway musicals, is of turning up the volume at the end of each act as if loudness itself will enhance the performances. Here it has the opposite effect. The music for Act 1 and 2 endings is so loud that it drowns out the tapping of the stepdancers, thus counteracting the whole point of presenting hardshoe stepdancing.
If the producers and director had allowed all the energy in the show to come from the dancers and musicians themselves without distracting our eyes or artificially overwhelming our ears, the show would have a much stronger impact. Ultimately, the dancers triumph over the loudness and the video game-like scenery. This troupe of such fantastically talented dancers deserves a far less gaudy showcase.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: (from top) Irish dance troupe, Bobby Hodges (centre); Afro-Cuban troupe; all dancers together. ©2013 Jim Byrne.
For tickets, visit <a href="http://www.mirvish.com">www.mirvish.com</a>.
<b>2014-01-27</b>
<b>Heartbeat of Home</b>