Choreographer: Emily Kilkenny Roddy
The promotional poster (Ste Murray) for Ruining The Act features a young woman in shocking pink tulle and trainers, lounging with attitude in a nest of pink balloons, in the boot of a car, eating ice cream. Think Madonna in Desperately Seeking Susan. And while the blurb mentions existential dread, it also promises clowns. Expectations are high for a fun evening.
Part of The Complex Arts Centre in Smithfield, The Depot Warehouse Theatre on Arran Street East, is a cool venue for Emily Kilkenny Roddy’s cutting edge dance show. The auditorium is packed to the rafters and the buzz is palpable. Roddy is joined on stage by Sibeal Davitt, Millie Daniel Dempsey and Rosie Mullin. The Artist has issued her manifesto in the programme notes. Her mission is to “question and celebrate how we, as people, perform”, how we “navigate life”, “suppress our instincts” and “get through the performance”, “on and off the stage”.
This message is communicated in an hour-long synergetic union of movement, music and audio (Oliver Ryan), lighting (Kevin Murphy), dialogue, singing and comedy. Displaying individual styles in the mesh of genres that shapes contemporary dance, together the troupe creates pathways that utilise the entirety of the floor. Against an elegant backdrop of mirrors (Eimear Hussey), they are an ensemble, coming together and apart, disconnecting then to execute solos and a duet.
Tobi Balogun has dressed the cast in a variety of loose fitting trousers, blouses and waistcoats. The theme is most certainly pink and I’m wondering if this suggests that it is women who are most likely to wear a mask as they go about their lives, reflecting different personas to different people as circumstances warrant. The costumes are so roomy as to make it difficult to properly appreciate the dancers’ lines in their steps and sequences, which is a pity as they are excellent. Particularly Roddy’s. Her silhouette is beautiful.
The Depot is used for a broad spectrum of artistic purposes. As such, understandably, there isn’t a dedicated stage for theatre. This will have been a challenge for the stage manager, Lora Hartin, as for the most part, the audience is on the same level as the dancers. And predictably, unless you are seated in the front row you will miss aspects of the dancing, especially as the artists apply every part of their anatomy in every particle of surrounding space … walking, running, hopping, skipping, jumping, swaying, sliding, shaking, shifting, turning, reaching, melting, supporting, falling, catching.
Did Ruining The Act deliver its brief? I’m not sure that without having read the programme in advance I would have grasped the representation of a journey into the “social constructs of performance and what that means to the individual”, but did I enjoy the ride? Hell yeah. This was a clever, witty and well choreographed dance show. And along with some massively energetic razzle dazzle (you know who you are!), an athletic and intimate duet, a hilarious Dublin bloke giving careers advice (“get yourself into ads … for Dunnes Stores or Boyle Sports”) we got our fun and funny, sparkly Clown (“clowning … the moneys shockin’..shockin’, but there’s always a buffet for some reason”). The closing note is delicious.
“So who are you today? What’s going on? When the whole world is a stage, why are you sitting over there? Get on stage, you’re on in 5!”. I’d better get moving.
Reviewed on June 8th 2023.
