Post-Riverdance: Colin Dunne at the NAC

Colin Dunne Out of Time. Image courtesy of Tristram Kenton.

If you are an Irish step dancer, how do you recover from the success and horror that was Riverdance? Colin Dunn‘s answer is to add things: spoken word, contemporary dance gestures (with arms), whistling, media projections of archival footage, one very minimal white-box prop, and the collaborative input of a sound designer. His post-Riverdance performance Out of Time took place at the NAC’s Studio last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings, incorporating all these things.

Dunne’s use of pre-Riverdance historical footage adds a wash of nostalgia that could have been overly sentimental if it wasn’t for his monologues. There is a bitterness to his stories, which make you aware of the gruelling hours spent training, the horrendous competitiveness of national tournaments, and the cultural tsunami of international success. Dunne serves extra-large helpings of pantomime throughout: “Do you want to see my hornpipe?” he asks, repeatedly. Have you ever tried to walk silently in mic’d tap shoes? Dunne tries to. Then there is the moment where he comically pulls microphone wires out of his pants. He tells of escalating feats of virtuosity in step dance battles: dancing on a greasy plate; a greasy plate on a barrel; a greasy plate on a barrel, on a table; a greasy plate on a barrel, on a table, on the roof. All without breaking the plate!

At times he shifts gears from acknowledging that, yes — with its high kicks and static top-half — Irish step dancing is awkwardly funny, to showing us that he is, actually, extraordinarily talented. This is a point he makes plainly obvious when he runs a news clip about the time he won every accolade for Irish step dancing at the age of 10.

You never get to see sound designer Fionan de Barra during the performance, but he is the wizard behind the curtain. The magic he spins allows Dunne to dance with himself: echos and loops to make it sound like, at times, there is a whole troupe of dancers on stage. At one point de Barra formulates a type of auto-tune for tap shoes, where the pitch is altered so percussion becomes melody.

All in all, Out of Time is an interesting compilation of old stories, new media and very fancy footwork – and it is one of the highlights from a very impressive dance line-up at the NAC. You can check out the full program for the 2011-2012 season here.

First published on apartment613 on 31 October 2011