Teaċ Daṁsa are a dance company established in Dingle, West Kerry just ten years ago, by Choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan. They have fast become known for their fearless and original contemporary productions.
Keegan-Dolan didn’t appear out of nowhere in 2019 though. He’s was formally an Associate Artist at Sadlers Wells and the Barbican, and was Artistic Director of Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre, but with Teaċ Daṁsa he has created something rooted in his own heritage, the folklore, music, landscape and culture of rural Ireland, and enhanced through collaboration and improvisation with international dancers and musicians.
MÁM is a brilliantly conceived collaboration with Irish concertina player Cormac Begley and European classical contemporary collective Stargaze. Begley opens the piece, sitting on a chair, his face hidden behind a ram mask, as his concertina wheezes and hisses and the house lights go down. In front of him, a child lies prostrate in a communion dress. As a curtain falls away to the side, a row of dancers, seated on old church chairs, faces hidden in creepy paper balaclavas, tap out a rhythm. It’s pure folk horror until the child sits up and tucks in to a bag of sweets.
The child is at the centre of MÁM. Never leaving the stage, watching everything and occasionally joining in to the fevered and frenetic dancing. While it’s all about her, it’s never really clear who she is – the lone child at the party, watching the antics of the grown-ups while everyone forgets she’s there? Is this a memory or a dream? Or is this the wake for a dead child? Whichever your interpretation, antics there are, and whether they’re frantic dreams, just human behaviour (perhaps with a little drink taken), or the seven stages of grief, we feel it viscerally while she just dispassionately looks on, motionless yet seemingly disappearing from one part of the stage and appearing in another. When she does join in, she dances like a wild thing, hair in her face, arms flailing.
The adults are both entertaining and menacing – they laugh and kiss, they threaten to throw chairs at each other, they catch each other when they fall. They dance alone, in pairs and all together, switching seamlessly from what looks like they’re all just doing their own thing to tight, mesmerising routines. There are lovely moments of humour, absurdity, and sensuality. A lone dancer writhes to an oboe solo. The dancers fill the stage, crowd into a corner, they dance amongst the band. They never stop, and the choreography is sublime.
With a second falling curtain (great design by Sabine Dargant, beautifully executed by the Production Team) a group of musicians is revealed. They take things up a notch with a contemporary take on the traditional, an ethereal violin cuts through everything, an oboe creates haunting sounds, all twisting together alongside Begley’s concertina.
A final curtain slides away to reveal the child standing in front of a brightly lit backdrop, a huge fan blowing smoke. She raises and lowers her arms conducting a chorus – her power over everyone belies her tiny frame. The company turn and look at us. The final poignant moment in eighty minutes of magnificent and faultless performance.
Runs until 4th February 2026 (and then touring)
The Reviews Hub Star Rating
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10
