Michael Keegan-Dolan’s show doesn’t even pretend to live up to the arresting proposition in its title – anyone hoping to glean a few useful tips on becoming a dancer would come away bitterly disappointed. What the Irish choreographer offers instead is a witty and touching exercise in autobiography in which he is ably abetted and illustrated by his resourceful wife, Rachel Poirier.
Born into a large and unlettered working-class family in north Dublin, Keegan-Dolan grew up jiving to Talking Heads and emulating Gene Kelly. Pigeon toes hobbled his four gruelling years in ballet training and as a performer he didn’t make it beyond the chorus line in West End musicals. He switched to choreography, mainly for opera, but soon jumped off that unrewarding treadmill. For the past decade he has been based in County Kerry, running a small company, Teac Damsa, that has earned considerable international acclaim for left-field productions which fruitfully critique traditions and prejudices.
There are some frustrating gaps in his spoken narration. How did he feel when he danced, what are the aesthetics behind his choreography? He doesn’t say. We need to be told more about his relationship to his family, and he never clarifies how the various twists and turns in his career came about. Why bring up an interest in Buddhism if you don’t explain its influence? The climax is very odd, too. Poirier erupts into a wild, apparently improvised whirl through Ravel’s exhausting Bolero, after which she and Keegan-Dolan sit rapt and immobile, as a recording of the stately processional at the end of Stravinsky’s The Firebird blares out.
Yet this is a very enjoyable 80-minute ride, in the course of which paddywack clichés and Billy Elliot sentimentalities are largely avoided. Keegan-Dolan has a dry but rich sense of humour, and he is blessed with his forefathers’ gift of the gab. His laconic accounts of losing his virginity and of auditioning for Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker are worthy of Flann O’Brien. The bare stage, furnished with a few props, is inventively used and lit, and Keegan-Dolan and Poirier prove themselves gifted physical clowns.
Valiant Northern Ballet soldiers on despite having lost its orchestra to inadequate funding. Shame on those responsible. But morale should be boosted by an excellent revival of its 2021 hit Merlin, touring to Nottingham, Sheffield and Norwich until mid-November. Created by Drew McOnie (now head honcho at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre), it’s a pseudo-Arthurian yarn that owes little to previous mythologisers such as Malory or T.H. White, and focuses on the idea of a greenhorn Merlin, adopted by a lady blacksmith, discovering the extent of his magical powers in the course of a war with Uther and Vortigern.
Keegan-Dolan has a dry but rich sense of humour, and he is blessed with his forefathers’ gift of the gab
Never mind the over-detailed, over-populated plot, this is a gorgeous show, sumptuously designed in shades of gold by Colin Richmond and enhanced by some snazzy special effects and whimsical puppetry. Grant Olding’s score is brash and energetic, and even if McOnie’s choreography deserves no prizes for originality, it’s thoroughly serviceable. The entire cast attacks it with gusto, and in the title role, Kevin Poeung is strikingly good – touchingly ingenuous in characterisation and effortlessly virtuosic in technique. He is one of the strongest dancers the company has fielded for years and I hope the management can hold on to him.
At the matinee I attended, an audience largely made up of primary-school children sat in silent thrall throughout, exploding with screeching delight at the curtain calls. You can’t argue with that.
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