The main interest of this essay is the Irish contemporary dance company CoisCéim Dance Theatre. It establishes the importance of the artistic and cultural environment out of which CoisCéim's work emerges and how they relate to the notion of Irish identity in the changing world of today. It argues that the artistic director and main choreographer of the company David Bolger is particularly interested in the notion of Irishness, without imposing boundaries on the term. He investigates the notions of identity amongst young people currently living in Ireland, without pinning them down to a traditional understanding of Irish nationalism. Bolger's artistic work with CoisCéim is in fact open to many potential interpretations of identity in the broader context of Irishness.

Firstly, it is important to consider the current state of contemporary dance in Ireland and the artistic context of Irish theatre. Contemporary dance, especially in Ireland, should not be viewed in isolation. The starting point is that the very text-based Irish theatre and its major themes have a strong impact on the performing arts in Ireland. Moreover, CoisCéim's artistic director David Bolger has been involved in many Irish theatre productions. The essay explores the cultural context of our contemporary world, particularly the trend towards more visual and physical ways of performing. It investigates some of the means through which CoisCéim's work is accessible to a wide audience. This will be established using examples from mainly two productions, namely Reel Luck (Dublin, DanceFest 95) and Back in Town (Dublin, DanceFest 97).

Although Irish theatre has without a doubt changed in the last few decades, many theatre critics would agree that the storytelling tradition, with a very text-based impression of theatre as a result, is still very much alive. Furthermore, the different ways in which Irish theatre has dealt with the discontinuity between historical and current identities, is of particular interest. In his study of Tom Murphy’s plays, Fintan O'Toole has shown that Irish writers like Brian Friel (in his play Translations) and Thomas Kinsella (in his translation of The Táin) have avoided the issue by diverting the attention towards the discontinuity between Gaelic and English, whereas Tom Murphy has dealt with it more directly.1 As I will establish further on, David Bolger is similarly inclined. A CoisCéim production like Reel Luck, for example, is an investigation of how Ireland has changed in the course of the last fifty years and has developed into what it is today.

This theatre-land of King Word does not have a strong dance school (yet). "Ireland is, after all, a country with even less of a ballet and modern dance background than Scotland."2 The Arts Plan calls this "the almost green field situation of dance in Ireland" and is currently trying to provide the necessary means to accommodate Irish professional dancers and their companies. A questionable aspect of The Arts Plan, however, has been its repeated wish "to lay some of the foundations for distinctive indigenous theatre dance from a strong infrastructure informed by the already existing rich cultural heritage of traditional music and dance". Bolger is amongst many who are uneasy about such a statement. In an interview he says:

I mean, what is that? What is Irish and Irishness? I am very interested in Irish culture and very proud to be Irish so I would want to embrace that. But where do you lay the foundations for this style? In Irish tradition dance? What about people in clubs, Irish people dancing in Irish clubs? Is that Irish? What they wanted has to come from within, not be imposed from outside, particularly by a funding body.3

The Arts Plan seems to be quite preoccupied with traditional dance in Ireland. I take Riverdance to be an example of a contemporary dance show that could answer to the implicit stipulation within this plan. Contrasting CoisCéim with the Riverdance Company will consequently emphasise CoisCéim's categorically different point of departure. "It is CoisCéim's self-appointed task to take in hand popular notions of contemporary Irish dance and lead them into fresh territory, far from any showbizzy Celtic extravaganza."4

Both Riverdance and The Lord of the Dance are exuberant and exhilarating spectacles, celebrating Irish culture and its encounter with other cultures and their traditional dances (e.g. Flamenco). They are looking back over their cultural shoulder towards a rich and beautiful heritage. The focus of those powerful pieces of entertainment is on the past, on traditional values long since gone. It is a ritual commemoration of an Ireland of the Celts, a romantic ceremony of yearning nostalgia.

CoisCéim gently sending up Riverdance in their whirlwind Taps With Sax in itself is not really the point. I will later establish that Bolger proves humour to be his forte.5 What really matters is that the laugh is a means to an end. First, it makes the performances answer Bertolt Brecht's claim that theatre (and therefore dance theatre) should be entertaining before anything else. Secondly, it is also one of the tools that make the dances accessible to a wide range of spectators, regardless of their foreknowledge or partiality. Thirdly and most importantly in this context, Bolger's dances always and clearly focus on today, not on some long forgotten past. If we follow Fintan O'Toole, CoisCéim is taking its part in securing the future of Irish (dance) theatre.

Theatre is being used not as a playground for nostalgia but as a way of testing contemporary experience. So long as that is happening, it will hold its place in Irish culture.6

The question that arises then is why a very physical medium has emerged out of an extremely text-based context. What need did it respond to? What breach did it step into? Fintan O'Toole partially answered that by pointing out the major influence television and film have on the expectations of drama-hungry audiences. Consequently, in the last ten years, as O'Toole remarks in one of his recent columns,7 Irish theatre also has become more physical, more visual and more direct, but without losing its roots of the storyteller or its interest in national identity. This explanation should not be underestimated in a postmodern world where multimedia with their typically high visual (and aural) impulse rate are storming into our everyday lives. If day-in and day-out the breaking point of our perceptivity is being extended through computer, film and television screens, then it is only natural that also the theatre (and in turn dance theatre) -already being a very condensed medium- is required to be even more visual and direct.

The major claim of visuality is one influence of our technological culture. A second very important one has to do with the structure of modern communication. Books are out of fashion, hypertext is "in". We no longer go from one page to the next, but surf through a flow-chart of hyper-links. Not only our eyes require communication to be flashier, also the form and structure of presentation needs to be different to challenge a contemporary audience. It should therefore not come as a surprise that most of CoisCéim's productions are in fact (postmodern) patchworks of matching colours. Every production choreographed by David Bolger is like a nicely interwoven series of scenes on one or several themes. The announcements in CoisCéim's programme notes state it clearly.

A fast paced journey to present day Ireland, Reel Luck captures the pace of the transformation in Irish culture over recent decades. From the land of de Valera's vision and moving statues, it explores the changes in the role of women, moral values, symbols of fortune, and the rural/urban divide.8

For the artistic director of CoisCéim -David Bolger- it was very much about forming "a contemporary dance company that would capture the spirit and convey the energy of Ireland's young people".9 Apart from this, David Bolger has an investigative rather than conclusive attitude in his choreographic work. For example, "Straight with Curves is all about journeys, not destinations."10 The exploration is the goal in itself. An intentional hidden agenda is of no interest to him. "There is no underlying statement that the audience is supposed to 'get'. [Bolger] is not looking for an extractable message for the audience to take home."11 When this is understood, it becomes obvious that a stimulating patchwork of exploring questions suits him better then a well-defined straightjacket of answers would. He raises questions and provides food for thought, rather than giving any answers.

CoisCéim also makes a point of presenting dance shows that are open to a wide audience, regardless of their foreknowledge of modern dance or performing arts in general. David Bolger gains this object on the one hand through the usage of humour in his productions, and on the other hand through presenting shows that draw upon the common cultural background of the audience.

The way in which humour constantly puts CoisCéim's themes into perspective makes them quite unique. Ninety-three percent (93%) of all the reviews ever published on CoisCéim mention in some way or another how humorous and witty David Bolger's choreographies are. This excludes CoisCéim´s most recent production Ballads, which turned out to be a very different kind of production altogether. Then again, dealing with the famine years of the nineteenth century as a subject, nobody was exactly expecting to be rolling with laughter.

It seems to be a new option for some young and avant-garde choreographers to express themselves not only with dance, but with humour, mimicry and dialogue. The time when contemporary dance was purely conceptual has moved on to another direction and it feels good.12

Raillery has been a major ingredient of most of Bolger's choreographies up untill now, but it was never an end in itself. The mockery is usually employed to put the (heavy) themes of the dances into perspective. In Reel Luck this device was used to question the idealistic Irish past that some people might wish to keep conserved. It shook the present alive, allowed it to be aware of the past, but at the same time forced it to stand on its own two feet. The show was called "a dance musical skit on Irishness. It deals with traditional Irish values, morals and society, and the difficulty/futility of keeping an old Ireland alive in a modern world."13

Reel Luck has been CoisCéim's bravest and most direct investigation of Irish culture so far. It raises the question of what has happened between Ireland in the thirties and now. It does this without any sense of doom or regret, with a strong sense of responsibility in the present. Right from the start this production left no doubt that it would explore Irish identity. It opened with a projection of the traditional symbol of the Irish harp on the dancefloor, while a notorious speech by the late Irish president Eamonn de Valera from the thirties is heard, "in which he envisages an Ireland which upholds high moral standards and does not succumb to the evils of a materialistic and greed driven society".14 Taoiseach Eamon de Valera's "famous vision of a bucolic rural paradise"15 was Bolger's point of contrast in investigating the realities of young people in the contemporary Irish context.

An Ireland of the nineties is then explored when a steamy atmosphere in a Latin (!) night-club is evoked (abruptly ended by loud bartenders shouting "Time, folks please!"). A fiddler gently breaks the sudden silence with an enchanting ballad. He remains on stage most of the performance, escorting and musically guiding the dancers' movements, governing and every so often inverting the atmosphere with heavy, gloomy tunes like The Foggy Dew and fast energetic reels. Wearing an outfit a few centuries out of fashion as if he was a leprechaun, he symbolises the command of Irish tradition on the dancers in modern colourful clothes, who stand for contemporary Irish citizens.

They can -as in Reel Luck- offer up their native history and culture with a roguish, twinkling humour that nonetheless carries brave home truths in its presentation of traditional icons.16

Through dance (...) [Bolger] engaged with, sent up and toppled a number of cultural traditions held dear to many in this country.17

The production is indeed "a fast paced journey to present day Ireland", which "captures the pace of the transformation in Irish culture over recent decades". 18 It is in other words a "pastiche of Irish political and cultural kitsch".19 There is traditional Irish tap-dancing (céili), a mock hurling match, a mock fight with hurling sticks, armed soldiers marching, housewives hanging clothes, dying, a wake, religion and an unwanted pregnancy. de Valera's idealism is subtly shown up as not being up-to-date or of this world by singing his speech and making it into a kind of traditional Irish rebel song. The nicest link between old and modern times is saved for the end, when the fiddler is forced to interrupt his performance due to his bleeping mobile phone.

Back in Town, CoisCéim’s production on the late Phil Lynott and his band Thin Lizzy, is made accessible to a wide audience by employing a context that is very well-known and highly familiar to a broad range of people in our society. Here, Bolger uses the paradigm of Rock & Roll to explore the identity of young Irish people in a modern world. It is not an Irish-specific common knowledge, but one that is pre-eminently shared by most young people and to those who have been young in the recent past.

It brings alive not just something of Lynott's own energy but also what the music meant to fans who wore the band's uniform, lived the lyrics, and longed to be Lynott.20

It showed clamorous, idealistic teenagers in their attempt at heroism - the straining delirium of fans against the barriers - wonderfully mixing the atmosphere of Lynott's live performance with the excitement of rock concert rebellion.21

One of the songs danced to is Jailbreak, which "appeared like still clips from a movie, newspaper flash photography or slow motion newsreel footage".22 Before the song actually starts, the dancers pick up a ten feet long barrier and hold it in front of them while the audience hears thousands of fans chanting "Liz-zy! Liz-zy! Liz-zy!". The dancers cheer, gradually taken in by the growing atmosphere of a rock concert impatiently waiting for the star to appear. They remind us of groupies in the front row "moshing against crash-barriers in perfect, MTV-video style slow motion"23 They push each other aside, trying to get a closer look of the "studied casual cool"24 of the idol on stage and dying to get his attention.

Also in this production humour remains Bolger's main trademark, as "his admiration of Lynott did not prevent him raising laughs at the egos, rivalries and image-making of the rock world".25 In this crash-barrier scene Phil Lynott himself jokes with the audiences. Firstly, he says: "Is there anybody out there who has got any Irish in them?" Loud cheers. Then he asks: "Any of you girls out there want some more Irish in them?" This joke is more than just funny. If there is one thing Ireland is definitely not -especially not in the seventies and eighties when Phil Lynott was alive- then it is a multi-cultural society. Ireland is a country with a long history of emigration, not immigration. So being a black man like Phil Lynott who is still an Irishman through and through, and who has the street credibility of a hard-living rock star (sex, drugs and Rock & Roll), makes him a highly remarkable figure.

He was the first Irish star, a fact that may touch a highly sensitive national nerve since perhaps the more polite prefer that the first Irish nominee for celebrity should be a more appetising character and role model than - to consciously put it very crudely - a dead black junkie from Crumlin.26

Not only did Bolger unpretentiously explore the behavioural patterns of young people at rock concerts, their rebel poses, macho attitudes, narcissism, the dancefloor aggression, the romanticism of teenage life, shifting from steamy atmospheres of sweaty testosterone to gentle pieces of femininity; he also touched upon the problematic notion of identity. He addresses the notion of discontinuity in Irishness, mentioned above. Indirectly, by adopting Lynott's icon, Bolger investigates a new way of claiming identity, as Roddy Doyle does in The Commitments.

Phil Lynott thou shouldst be living at this hour. The man who invented the public persona of the black Irishman would have enjoyed (...) the white Dublin boys of The Commitments proclaiming "I'm black and I'm proud".27

"Your music," says Jimmy Rabbitte in the most popular Irish novel of recent years, Roddy Doyle's The Commitments, "should be about where you're from and the sort of people you come from." Nothing there, in essence, that could not have been said by Yeats or Synge or Lady Gregory, all of whom believed that a culture should be about the place and the people you come from. It is the bit that comes next that they might have had difficulty with: "'Say it once, say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud.' They looked at him. 'James Brown...' They were stunned by what came next. 'The Irish are the niggers of Europe, lads.' They nearly gasped, it was so true. 'An' Dubliners are the niggers of Ireland ... 'An' the Northside Dubliners are the niggers of Dublin - Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud.'"How did we get from the beginning of that passage to the end, from Yeats to James Brown, from the idea of national cultural distinctiveness to the desire not just to be somebody else, but to be a different race, and an oppressed one at that? And why do you find, in works by younger Irish writers from urban communities, conscious usage of imagery linking the Irish not just to the blacks but to the Indians, a linkage that is sometimes playful and comic, but sometimes serious and almost literal.28

It is not just about Lynott being black. He is the incarnation of discontinuity. He was a man of many faces, as Putterford writes: "The diamond geezer, the complete bastard. The easy-going drinking pal, the moody ogre. The joker, the sulker. The simple Irish boy watching TV with his granny, the international Playboy raging around the world in a chemically-induced frenzy."29 He is a rock-hard poseur in Jailbreak and a kitten-soft loving father in Sarah. He is the toughest of the guys in The Boys are Back in Town and has got his soul on his tongue in Dublin. Bolger goes along with the moodshifts of the lyrics and the music. He mocks the rock poses of the solo guitarist and the singer. He impersonates the loser, the outcast and the boyishness of the Boys. He keeps it sound and incorruptible as Lynott's music sets the tone. I quoted O'Toole on The Commitments as it is relevant to the figure of Phil Lynott being a black Irishman. He comes to the conclusion that part of the new Irish identity currently being explored in the arts plays strongly upon that discontinuity between two worlds.

What contemporary Irish culture is doing in all of this is demolishing the colonial opposition of Self and Other and re-inventing the ideal of the Self as Other. It is bored with the old confrontations of England and Ireland, city and country, civilisation and barbarism, and prefers to play with the fruitful paradoxes which its peculiar history has made possible - the foreign native, the white black, the civilised barbarian. It is enjoying the benefits of a long history of being on the borders of two worlds and turning its dread status of being neither one thing nor the other into the playful pleasures of being both and neither.30

The artistic explorations of David Bolger seem to be trying to come to terms with the discontinuity O'Toole already mentioned in his book on Tom Murphy. Not so much in order to solve it, but in order to gradually understand by questioning it. What has been and what remains? What is now and what has it replaced? Irish culture and its political and spiritual history are obviously highly complicated. Their delightful paradoxes offer artists the luxury of being able to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, with a certain unsteadiness and insecurity as fuel to keep them searching.

As stated at the outset of this essay, the purpose of the investigation was to find out how CoisCéim explores Irishness in the evolving world of the very late twentieth century. It does so by presenting the audience with food for thought, by asking open questions rather than stipulating what sort of response is expected. It applies the postmodern device of patchworking, loosely bringing together a number of sketches and allowing the audience to make the connections and draw its own conclusions. However, it can be argued that patchworking does not really allow for detailed analysis, as it skims too lightly over the issues involved. Both Hit and Run and Back in Town arguably fall into this trap.

Back in Town addresses issues of young people's identity -like Hit and Run- which are not confined to the Irish context, although that context is touched upon. Reel Luck in this sense restricted itself to a much more direct approach to stereotypical notions of Irishness. In addressing for example interaction between the sexes, "coolness" and nightlife, both most recent shows present a number of inventive ideas without, however, offering any real insights.

As the company matures, it can hopefully be expected to explore a deeper level of contemporary Irish identity. Another option is that they will start pursuing a totaly different theme, possibly broader still. There is little doubt that CoisCéim, in their four years of existence, has made quite a difference in the cultural life of Ireland. The wish to the end is that the quest continues.

choreographer: David Bolger

1994 National Concert Hall Dublin

choreographer: David Bolger

1994 Project Arts Centre Dublin - New Music/New Dance Festival

choreographer: David Bolger

1995 Old Museum Arts Centre Belfast - Dancetime 95

choreographer: David Bolger

1995 Project Arts Centre Dublin - DanceFest 95

choreographer: David Bolger

November 1995 Project Arts Centre Dublin

teachers : David Bolger, Liz Roche

November 1995

choreographer: respectively David Bolger and Liz Roche

November 1996 Old Museum Arts Centre - Belfast Festival at Queens

choreographer: David Bolger

February 1997 Project @ the mint Dublin

choreographer: respectively Liz Roche and David Bolger

June 1997 Samuel Beckett Centre, Trinity College Dublin - DanceFest 97

choreographer: David Bolger

October 1997 The System Danceclub - Launch show Dublin Theatre Festival

choreographer: David Bolger

November 1997 - Project @ the mint Dublin

2 West, in: Scotland on Sunday (March 24th 1996)

3 Bolger interviewed by Seaver, in: The Irish Times (June 5th 1997)

4 Clancy, in: The Times (Jan 1st 1997)

5 If Michael Flatley is the Lord of the Dance, then David Bolger is the Jester. Historically (and then we go back to the Middle Ages) the jester was not just a harmless clown. It was a figure who understood the art of expressing harsh truths under a veil of pleasantry.

6 O'Toole, in: The Irish Times (Aug. 19th 1997)

7 ibid.

8 Programme notes to Reel Luck and Straight with Curves (1994)

9 Bolger interviewed by Seaver (o.c.)

10 Kostik, in: Project Journal 1 (Dublin: Project Arts Centre, Jan./Feb. 1996)

11 ibid.

12 Guerin, in: The Big Issues (July 2nd 1997)

13 Murphy, in: The Event Guide (June 14th-27th 1995)

14 Ní Dhuibhir, in: Trinity News (Dec. 7th 1995)

15 O'Toole (1994b: 25)

16 Brennan, in: The Herald (March 18th 1996)

17 O'Brien, in: Project Arts Centre (Sept-Oct 1995)

18 Programme notes to Reel Luck and Straight with Curves (1994)

19 Clarke, in: The Tribune Magazine (Nov. 24th 1996)

20 Brennan, in: The Herald (July 11th 1997)

21 Kelleher, in: The Examiner (June 13th 1997)

22 ibid.

23 Lowry, in: The Irish Independent (June 11th 1997)

24 Graham, in: Hot Press XV/3 (Feb. 21th 1991)

25 Swift, in : The Irish Times (June 11th 1997)

26 Graham (o.c.), p. 33

27 O'Toole (1994a: 70)

28 O’Toole (1994a: 56)

29 Putterford (1994: 33)

30 O'Toole (1994a: 69)

BRENNAN, Mary, "CoisCeim Dance Theatre, Theatre Workshop, Edinburgh", in: The Herald (March 18th 1996)

CLARKE, Jocelyn, "In step with David Bolger and mould-breaking Coisceim", in: The Tribune Magazine (Nov. 24th 1996)

CLANCY, Luke, "Skirting issues in no little style", in: The Times (Jan. 22nd 97)

GRAHAM, Bill, "You can always hear The King's Call", in: Hot Press XV/3 (Feb. 21th 1991), pp. 24-25.

GUERIN, Karine, "Dancing In The Moonlight", in: The Big Issues (July 2nd 1997)

KELLEHER, Maureen, "Musical breathes new life into Lynott's classics", in: The Examiner (June 13th 1997)

KOSTICK, Gavin, "CoisCéim: Straight with Curves", in: Project Journal 1 (Dublin: Project Arts Centre, Jan./Feb. 1996)

LOWRY, Chris, "A short dance in the life of Philo", in: The Irish Independent (June 11th 1997)

MURPHY, Trish, " Reel Luck - Cois Ceim Dance Theatre", in: The Event Guide ((Dublin: D&K Media, June 14th-27th 1995)

Ní DHUIBHIR, Tríona, "Dancing at the crossroads", in: Trinity News (Dec. 7th 1995)

O'BRIEN, Paul, "DanceFest '95: Dance Feast?", in: Project Arts Centre (Dublin, Sept-Oct 1995)

O'TOOLE, Fintan, Black Hole, Green Card. The Disappearance of Ireland (Dublin: New Island Books, 1994a)

O'TOOLE, Fintan, "I'm relieved I was wrong", in : The Irish Times (Aug. 19th 1997)

O'TOOLE, Fintan, "Learning to dance for ourselves", in: The Irish Times (Feb. 4th 1997)

O'TOOLE, Fintan, Tom Murphy: The Politics of Magic (Dublin: New Island Books, 1994b)

PUTTERFORD, Mark, Phil Lynott. The Rocker (London: Castle Communications, 1994)

SEAVER, Michael, "The energy of youth", in: The Irish Times (June 5th 1997)

SWIFT, Carolyn, "Tribute to a rock superstar", in : The Irish Times (June 11th 1997)

WEST, Geoffrey, "Cois Céim", in: Scotland on Sunday (March 24th 1996)

WEST, Geoffrey, "Company gets to the pointe", in: Scotland on Sunday (March 24th 1996)

DANCE IN IRELAND

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COISCEIM DANCE THEATRE

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