MÁM
Mo Cross reviews at The Birmingham Hippodrome
Teaċ Daṁsa, the dance company of choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan, launched its nine-venue tour of MÁM on February 3rd and arrived in Birmingham last night for the first of only two performances in the city. This Olivier-award nominated performance was first created in 2019 and is now the first Irish company to tour with Dance Consortium, alongside concertina player Cormac Begley, winner of the RTE Folk awards Best Instrumentalist and Irish Times Album of the year 2022, and European Classical contemporary collective s t a r g a z e.
I came across a clip online of a few of the dancers describing their experience, when they gathered at Teaċ Daṁsa's studio in Dingle, West Kerry and spent the first four weeks just improvising with the musicians and each other to create the piece. It makes perfect sense that the entire ensemble was so completely in sync after building the world of MÁM together in this way.
The concertina playing was incredible, blending a traditional sound with a more contemporary style, and when s t a r g a z e joined Begley on stage the music became even more integral to the dancers’ performance. Revolving around a central character of a young girl in a white dress, the twelve dancers weave wordless stories as she looks on and wanders through the madness, sometimes just watching and eventually joining in.
The list of accolades already collected for this performance is impressive, and the skill of both the musicians and the dancers is evident from the start. The choreography is wild and fluid, but the dancers don’t miss a step as they whirl their way through. As someone who grew up taking lessons in Irish dancing where we were never allowed to lift our arms and everything was counted in threes and sevens, I could see the resistance to these arbitrary rules in every decision the choreographer made.
To me, this is a genre-defining piece of modern dance-theatre, and epitomises contemporary developments in art and music. Training for years under a “classical” approach, whether in ballet as was the case with Keegan-Dolan, or musically as is the case for many instrumentalists, once a system is ingrained and understood you can start creatively breaking it. Similar to the adage about modern jazz, that you have to pay attention to the notes they’re not playing, this piece was imbued with meaning and emotion, but to the untrained viewer (myself included) it was all a bit puzzling.
The moments that stood out to me were the brief breaks from the serious artistry, the playful interactions between the girl and the dancers, usually revolving around packets of crisps she seemed to be sneaking. Or the dancers sneaking intimate moments with each other in the whirlwind of the full stage. In the final scenes, there was clearly a message to be received, I want to name rebellion, resistance, and power reclaimed, but that could just be me overlaying my own expectations.
I suppose that’s where the beauty of this type of performance lies, in that whatever you feel while watching, it is your unique experience, and in a room full of people you can share a moment of connection through your own individual lens.