Photo: Ross Kavanagh
TRADITIONAL dance as you have never seen it. Yes, step dancing from Kerry, contemporary Irish and in the mix, original styles from Appalachia in Amerikay, Canada’s Ottowa Valley and live music and singing.
Four amazing dancers and three musicians/ singers come together to hammer out the percussive, spirited show ‘Anam’ that sold out Dublin’s Samuel Beckett Theatre and Siamsa Tíre in Tralee, where it premiered.
Limerick gets a chance to gawp and gasp on Friday September 15 when ‘Anam’ comes to Lime Tree Theatre at 8pm. The 90 driven minutes are jointly directed by dancer Jonathan Kelliher and Sue-Ellen Chester McCarthy. Music and song are composed by the acclaimed multi-instrumentalist Fergal O Murchú.
There to play O Murchú’s work plus the true dance music of Flat Foot from the hills of USA and Canada’s native works will be Mikey Smith on pipes and tin whistle and Joseph McNulty on bodhrán and guitar.
Confused by this fusion? Let Jonathan Kelliher pipe us to clarity…
“The concept to ‘Anam’ was floating around in my head for a good few years. I’m from North Kerry and know the old style of dancing [Munnix] that is unique to the area and dating back to the 1700s.
“I thought to bring three, four, five different styles of dance together and we had a couple of workshops”. He talks of going to the feiseanna over the years and appreciating that Dublin, Cork, Clare, Donegal, many counties had styles unique to them.
For North Kerry’s, he perceives it “to have a steadier rhythm and is a lot more fluid in movement than the percussive rhythm of how many heel taps per beat”.
Of Nathan Pilatzke’s Ottowan dancing, he says it is not related to Irish at all, just as Appalachian Flat Foot (Matthew Olwell) is completely different. John Fitzgerald is gifted in Irish contemporary. “I thought, let’s get styles into a room together first. Is there common ground there? Rhythm is one.”.
Through recording, emulating, breaking down various elements, the dancers were able to lay down a seven-minute section to the one rhythm – each retaining their own style. And thus ‘Anam’ slowly grew.. legs?
The four men dance together, dance solo, in duets, in threes. Musicians weave around the stage, as present and significant and the dancers sing with them in part. All the time, instruments are changing to ring true to each country’s own music.
They have no microphones attached so the fluidity of the dancers is reflected in deft manoeuvres on stage.
An amazing show by all accounts as the men “get their dancing shoes on to weave their ancient magic. Another kind of soul emerges”.
