REVIEW

MICHAEL SEAVERon a dance film shot at Dulin's Garden of Remembrance.

Frozen/Two Worlds Lie at their Feet

Project, Cube

THE GARDEN of Remembrance, that oasis of calm in the middle of Dublin city, is the birthplace for Shakram Dance Company's dance film Frozen.

Live palms and soles press against the cold metal of Oisín Kelly's The Children of Liras four dancers blend classical Indian and contemporary dance forms through watery camera angles. Kelly's dynamic sculpture finds both a kinaesthetic and aesthetic resonance with Maireád Vaughan's choreography, not just with its sense of movement, but also with its theme of rebirth and regeneration. Scooping up water with the reverence of worshippers on the Ganges, the dancers wade though the garden's cruciform pool and together journey, both literally and metaphorically, onto Dublin's busy streetscape.

Attempting to reconcile modern Ireland with its history, the dancers encounter equal indifference between the cold lifeless statues of the past - inert statesmen unlike the dynamic Children of Lir- and the freneticism of modern day consumerism as it stands in front of the camera or passes by with a smirk. And while the onlookers' puzzlement at public dancing provided the most amusement, it also drew a highlighter through the issue of the contemporary dancer within contemporary society. Although Shakram's work primarily addresses perceived differences between cultures, Frozenis within the zeitgeist, as Vaughan and co-producer Dara O'Brien join other dance film-makers like Rebecca Walters, Nick Bryson and Fearghus O Conchuir in questioning the status of the live dancing body within the urban environment.

At the end of the film, night has fallen and the four dancers - Vaughan, Eloy Casanova, Olwyn Grindley and Rebecca Reilly - walk alongside sculptor Rowan Gillespie's famine victims in the city's docklands. As striking as the opening sequence with Kelly's sculpture, these images suggest that the cycle of death and rebirth will re-begin at dawn back at the Garden of Remembrance. It is at these two sites that Frozensuggests how the past is best commemorated: not in the sterile representation of politicians on plinths, but in the spiritual connection and human empathy with the past, whether mythological or tragically real.

There was also a sense of conflict in the live Two Worlds Lie at their Feet, where Vaughan and actor Regan O'Brien performed two solos simultaneously. Cloaked with a sense of regret, the two performers constantly return to gaze out two windows backstage and write on the glass with their fingers. However individual their paths, they find common points of contact, not just when bodies collide and two solos became one duet, but in finding a shared sense of hope and disappointment.

O'Brien was a sometimes nervy, sometimes angry presence and although Vaughan's physicality was more quiet-spoken, she too could be twitchy nervous or splicing angry. But ultimately, the two performances - and Dara O'Brien's live soundscape - were uneasy together and the promised synergy was largely absent.

MICHAEL SEAVER