Sunstruck, RoS Indexical, Spiraling Down

Dublin Dance Festival, Smock Alley and Project Arts Centre

The Rite of Spring’s riotous premiere in 1913 has developed a mythical status for effectually ruining Vaslav Nijinsky’s reputation as a choreographer, yet furthering composer Igor Stravinsky’s career. The score is now a concert hall regular, but the original choreography was forgotten and now only exists in a historian’s reconstruction. Since then, many choreographers have revisited Stravinsky’s “undanceable” score, some cheekily and others straight-faced, as if to wonder what the fuss was about.

In RoS Indexical, Yvonne Rainer is utterly dismissive of the grave weight of reputation and sprinkles her choreography with mannerisms of Groucho Marx and Robin Williams. Choosing whimsy over intellectual bullying, she has created a dance that is light and fresh, but razor-sharp in its revision. There is never a sense that Nijinsky is being sent up; rather, what is been satirised is the artistic prejudice that he was subjected to and that continues to stifle new thinking. She magnifies this by choosing the soundtrack from the BBC film Riot at the Rite, which pushes Stravinsky's music behind the audience's insults, delivered in plummy period-drama voices.

There's an ever bigger rattlebag of sources for Rainer's latest work, Spiraling Down, including the likes of Pelé, Jerome Robbins and Sylvia Plath. A rich and playful collage of movement with spoken and recorded text, it unravels into a string of quotations that is unpredictable but always immensely satisfying: an impeccably danced quartet might collapse into a grimacing boogie monster chasing the others or witty comments about Facebook and YouTube. Here, the choreographer's downright silliness is at its height, delivered with near perfection by dancers Emily Coates, Patricia Hoffbauer, Keith Sabado and Sally Silvers.

Over in Smock Alley, warm saki and green tea are served in foggy darkness as a prelude to Sunstruck by Helen Herbertson and Ben Cobham. The dulled visual sense reflects the illusiveness of memory, as two dancers move within inches of the audience. Every movement seems an effort at recall, like wriggling fingers at the end of outstretched arms that grasp for a forgotten memory.

With the performers’ interior world out-of-bounds, the audience are nudged towards self-reflection, probably the cause of the long silence that precedes the generous applause.

Dublin Dance Festival runs until May 23