Reviews

Reviews today include Vespers at Firkin Crane in Cork, Rachel Talbot, Alison Browner, Robin Tritschler, Philip O'Reilly  and the Canzona Chamber Choir, in St Ann's Church, Dawson Street, Dublin and Antony Gormley  at the Model Arts Gallery, Sligo

Vespers

Firkin Crane, Cork

The fusion of speech, song, movement and music in Vespers tilts lightly against the conventions of modern dance without stretching them very far. Fearghus O'Conchuir's Corp Feasa Company performs this trio for two women as a duet. The third dancer is seen only in the video commentary - the choreographer, whose role is both powerful and remote and the provenance of the theme of the piece.

As the women striving to assert themselves against the dance-master's controlling definitions, Rionach Ní Neil and Rebecca Walters work hard to evoke a sense of intimacy. The introductory use of backlit screens, banded at the corners like snapshots in an album of sepia images, indicates the almost distorted emotional narrative dictating their movements. They lack the fluidity which might give them more appeal.They touch and intertwine before separating into the distance between their individual responses and somehow evade that link of coherence.

Eamon Fox's lighting contributes significantly to the atmosphere of this work, but it is a pity that Corp Feasa accepts the practice of other companies in not identifying the music to which the dancing is scripted, apart from crediting the composers - in this case Arvo Pärt, Handel, Piaf and Bjork. Is the music not an integral element of the composition as a whole?

Mary Leland

Rachel Talbot (soprano), Alison Browner (contralto), Robin Tritschler (tenor), Philip O'Reilly (bass), Canzona Chamber Choir, Orchestra of St Cecilia / Blánaid Murphy

St Ann's Church, Dawson Street, Dublin

Cantatas 156, 73, 111, 72.......................................J.S. Bach

All four of these Cantatas were designed for the third Sunday after Epiphany, between 1715 and 1729. The music not only hints at feeling but identifies religious ideas with particular musical strategies. Unity with God is represented by parallel thirds, the fulfilment of God's will by imitation, sin by chromaticism, trust in God by an anapaestic rhythm (two short notes followed by a long); this, and much else, is to be learnt from Ann Leahy's helpful programme notes. It was quite an effort to make such connections while listening; the burghers of Leipzig would have had more exposure to such music and would have appreciated it in a way that is hardly possible today.

The beautiful oboe tune at the beginning of No. 156 was also used in the slow movement of the presumably secular Harpsichord Concerto in F minor, so perhaps it is not absolutely necessary to regard the music as a sermon in sound, despite the pious exhortations of the texts. Rachel Talbot's soprano soared ecstatically over the texture, Alison Browner (contralto) negotiated in her complex parts with practised ease, Robin Tritschler (tenor) was her equal partner in "So shall I go with determined steps" - the music here does sound stepwise - in No. 111; but of all the soloists it was Philip O'Reilly (bass) who made the words sound most meaningful, most closely allied to the music. His aria Herr, so du willt (Lord, if you will) in No. 73 was one of the most expressive contributions to the Cantatas.

The Canzona Chamber Choir, beginning and ending each Cantata, framed them as with a sturdy temporal portico, and the Orchestra of St Cecilia discreetly supported and linked chorus, recitative and aria; Blánaid Murphy was the conductor.

Douglas Sealy

Antony Gormley

Model Arts Gallery, Sligo

The human form has been an ongoing source of inspiration in Antony Gormley's sculpture, and States and Conditions offers an overview of Gormley's use of this most archetypal of icons.

The principal works in this exhibition are from Gormley's Insider series (numbers V, VI and VII), life-size cast-iron representations of etiolated humanity standing in neutral attitudes, the products of a mathematical reduction of the figures' body space. Looking at them it is hard not to think of Giacometti's elongated figures, but the Insiders are more pointy and angular, less elegant, rawer. This paring-down acts as a distillation, revealing an inner core of common humanity. The use of raw, unfinished iron reinforces the sense of the elemental, and these alien yet familiar figures propose an intriguing, unflinching and slightly uncomfortable reflection on the reality of the human condition.

Also based on the human form is Disease, another life-size figure made out of uniform steel blocks. The figure stands in a pose of tension or discomfort (literally dis-ease), the blocks suggesting basic units/pixels threatening to unravel, a digitised form straining to maintain its integrity. A powerful image.

In Sovereign State, Gormley presents a blunt, lead-covered figure connected (via the body's orifices) to 300 metres of industrial-gauge rubber hose that lies sprawled around the figure and snakes off into the coffee area and gallery siderooms. The hose connects up into a closed circulatory system that centres on the figure lying on its side in a seated, vaguely foetal posture. Responsible for these territorial incursions, the figure is at the same time isolated from the outside environment and totally dependent on its prosthetic outgrowths. A wry, provocative work ripe with metaphorical potential.

Ian Wieczorek

Until March 2nd