With Raised Arms/Hear Me Sing Your Song, Project Arts Centre, Dublin

With Raised Arms

Hear Me Sing Your Song first featured during the Dublin Dance Festival as a work-in-progress, is now placed alongside another short piece, With Raised Arms, creating a double bill of the work of choreographer Liv O'Donoghue. Both have a wonderful ability to come at you in a different way, while being thought provoking, unsettling and original, combining into a powerful theatrical evening that lingers in the mind afterwards.

With Raised Arms is the first on the bill, and features O'Donoghue alongside Bryan O'Connell. From the moment you take your seat, you are aware of shallow breathing, distressed almost, coming from somewhere, but the large open stage of The Space Upstairs while lit in the centre, leaves the perimeter shrouded in darkness, while one wired microphone sits in the centre. As the housekeeping announcements commence, the shallow breather is revealed, her dance very jagged, as if trying to maintain control. A man working in the background comes forward, realising this is of course a dance show, decides to help us, the audience, enjoy the night more, speaking through the microphone to us, moving the woman into the perceived correct place, without asking her. All through the man builds up the scene, places a matt down so she can dance on it, sets up lights, even a chair to watch from, adding a voyeuristic unease to it all, always asking us if we would like it better, faster, in a way making us unwitting participants, 

This is an excellent piece that brings together all aspects, story and characters, two seemingly ordinary people, executed perfectly by O'Donoghue and O'Connell. It takes you in, unsettling, uncompromising, compelling but never using cheap tricks to do so. There is always a sense of foreboding, underlined by the lights closing in. It is gripping, showing how effectively dance, music and words can be used together. Tom Lane's sound score comes across like a dance track at a very underground, seedy club. The ending is abrupt in someways, not what you expect, keeping the audience off guard as the emotion of what's happened hits home and the man tries to tidy up the mess he has caused. Shocking and unflinching, it is honest theatre that never pulls punches, nor overdoes it in anyway, letting it speak for itself and to us.

Hear Me Sing Your Song

Hear Me Sing Your Song, the feature of the night is after the interval, the stage brighter, scattered with paper aeroplanes, five performers reading lines off them through megaphones, before the game ends, much to the disappointment of the boy. Around the perimeter of the stage are large pieces of wood, that will be used later in an inventive way, that, like the first half, will close in around them all. It has the feeling of people trying to tell a story but maybe never as well as intended, with a conversation with one speaking one language, the other responding in another. 

There is a feeling of isolation throughout this, despite five performers working together. Survival and regaining power is here as well, as one tries, encouraged by others, to use his legs. Hear Me Sing Your Song, performed by Clare Brzezicki, Maria Nilsson Waller and Bryan O'Connell, with a cameo by 14 year old Ben Sullivan, is mostly movement, with some music and brief, lovely singing as well. The idea to bring a hand held light into the action, a rhythm being played out strongly with wood against wood, adds to the striking feature. Once again the ending takes the audience off guard through its execution, not trying to shock, but being different.

Lighting plays a big part in this, a great design by Sarah Jane Shiels, who brings atmosphere to both pieces with a subtle touch. The costumes, chosen by O'Donoghue herself, are not loud or flashy, allowing the performers full movement in modern dress, be it tracksuit and tank top or long sleeved t-shirts and flowery dresses or woodcutter shirts, that wouldn't look out of place in the city centre. They fit perfectly with the scenario and situations, again showing how it stems from the characters and stories.

Together, they make an evening of original, satisfying, intelligent contemporary dance theatre, or any theatre for that matter. There are themes, ideas, that connect them. With Raised Arms is haunting, disturbing and stays in the memory, and is the most striking in many ways already mentioned, and for me, is the stronger of the two. It is great to see such creative staging, lighting and storytelling, coupled with a skilled dancer and choreographer whose not afraid to make bold choices.