Getting beneath the surface

When the Little Mermaid gets the legs she needs to become human, each step will feel as if a knife were being thrust through her feet. Yet despite the agony, she will be able to dance like no other human, writes Christine Madden.

Her grace, beauty and eloquence will be unequalled.

"I've always been fascinated with that story," says the choreographer David Bolger, artistic director of CoisCéim Dance Theatre. When he encountered Hans Christian Andersen's poignant fairy tale as a boy, it flared in his imagination. Now, years later, it has inspired Mermaids, which opens in Dublin next week.

Some might be tempted to suggest, lyrically, that the production echoes the symbiotic relationship between pain and creation, but, looking at Bolger, you'd be hard pressed to find a glimmer of truth in it. To the usual ageless look that dancers have he adds a sincere boyishness and a sense of play that illuminates his work.

He can also devise engaging choreography that delivers daring ideas and themes.

The past year has seen Bolger's expertise in demand both here and abroad. Following his riveting rendition of Stravinsky's The Rite Of Spring, which translated the pagan tales of the original into contemporary dating-and-mating rituals, Hit And Run, his dance film, had its premiere at the inaugural International Dance Festival Ireland last year. Directed by John Comiskey - Mermaids' set and lighting designer - and produced with Rough Magic Films, it has scooped several awards and appeared at leading festivals, most recently Dance Camera West, in Los Angeles, where it was praised for its technique and professionalism.

Bolger also visited Montreal to work on a French-Canadian performance of Dancing At Lughnasa, directed by Ben Barnes, and to the Royal Opera in London, where he choreographed Sophie's Choice and Love's Labour's Lost, working with Trevor Nunn on his final show.

This flurry of activity intensifies over the next month: as well as Mermaids, he is choreographing the opening show of the Special Olympics.

Bolger was daunted at first. "It was so terrifying to be asked," he says. But that it takes place at Croke Park, in front of tens of thousands of people, was as enticing as it was intimidating. "There are 300 people in the show, including some professional performers, but I'm also choreographing the 75,000 in the stadium." He laughs. "Hopefully, they'll all be doing the same thing at the same time."

Using the concept of a dash of colour, Bolger wants the choreography to celebrate the games and the great achievement and honour of hosting them. Special-needs sections will also figure in the show, which Bolger hopes will come together "in a way, in time to music, that will be quite moving".

He was amazed at the response from his fellow dancers. "So many people volunteered so quickly. What I liked about that as a choreographer was that what people were giving was not a donation but what they do, for free: giving their skill." The immensity of the project, produced by Rupert Murray, requires bold choreographic thinking.

The scale breaks the boundaries of anything Bolger has done before: Sophie's Choice, for example, featured 80 dancers. "I've got to think of people in blocks," he says. "There will be seven huge rainbows" - the number a further refraction of the seven colours of the rainbow. "The stadium is so large, I'll have to do something with big visual effect but also with a lot of heart and soul."

The challenge of overcoming physical limitations through an insuperable spirit - a struggle well known to dancers - figures not only in Bolger's interest in the Special Olympics project but also in Mermaids. Looking at several translations of Andersen's fairy tale, he noted that the story "talks an awful lot about anatomy".

Mermaids, to our eyes, are half human, half fish. To themselves, however, their fish tails are the most beautiful, alluring part of their make-up. The Little Mermaid has to face the reality that her defining characteristic would be ugly to the object of her love.

"To be beautiful to him," explains Bolger, "she would have to have these two clumsy props called legs. The story is so much about transformation; I wanted physically to show this - not with fishtails but in a satisfying, muscular way. Some people have this romantic idea of them, but they're strong, they can kill somebody."

This conflicting potential for grace and beauty on the one hand and for power and violence on the other mirrors the deceptive and mercurial depth of the ocean. "I grew up by the sea," says Bolger, "and it's a world we don't understand; we don't know what's in there. I was always fascinated by the creatures of the sea and its mythical characters, and the danger they represent. This is the extraordinary thing about the transformational properties of the sea: how it can give life and take it away."

As well as layering this elusive quality into his piece, Bolger "would like people to think about the sea and what we're doing to it". At about the time they began the workshops for Mermaids, last autumn, the oil tanker Prestige split in half off Spain. He was devastated to see seabirds and marine animals coated with oil. "It reminded me of what happens to the Little Mermaid." It's remarkable, he adds, that there are numerous contemporary references in the 19th-century tale.

CoisCéim's mermaids will perform on "a slice of water, without the water".Comiskey designed "an amazing environment for us to perform on", Bolger says. The soundscape consists of another amalgamation: an original piano score by Conor Linehan combined with further sound design by Paul Groothuis.

CoisCéim's dancers will wear costumes designed by Jodie Fried as they dance both "over and under the water".

Later this year, Bolger will perform with Diane O'Keeffe in Swept, a production with the Peacock. The piece will take place in the Peacock's bar rather than on stage, so Bolger predicts it will be a very personal and intimate performance.

In the wake of his success with Hit And Run, he'd also like to make another film with Comiskey, a possibility they're discussing. And Ezimotion, CoisCéim's programme for young people, directed by Jak Ahluwalia, continues to amaze and delight him.

"You should see the pieces they've made," he says. "These kids have a voice of their own." The programme is "something we're very proud of: not training young people to become dancers but to teach them to love dance, to get them involved in the creative process, to show them where dance, where movement comes from and that movement is everywhere, a part of your life."

He feels privileged to work in Dublin. "I'm glad I have the opportunity to work in my home town, with people I trained with, and I don't take this for granted. In the present climate, with such draconian funding cuts in the dance world, we're having a hard time, and I feel we have to stand this one out.

"If we leave now, who's going to look after the young artists? We have to show them the cultural, social value of art to the city, the country. If we as artists don't make that point, who's going to make it?"

Mermaids opens at Project, Dublin, on Tuesday, with previews from Friday. It runs until June 7th.