"IT has been a labour of love, and sometimes it has seemed like sheer folly," says the choreographer Adrienne Brown who nine years ago set up New Balance Dance Company.
In those early days, although there was little Arts Council funding for small dance companies, there was, she says, an atmosphere which was favourable to experiment: "I remember one night in 1987, we had one performance at the Project and it snowed, and snow was trickling in a stream through the roof. And yet people walked out of their homes to see that show. Things have moved on a lot, they're a lot more streamlined and professional, but in those days there was more room for trial and effort."
New Balance has been Arts Council funded since 1994 but is not one of the three dance companies mentioned in the Arts Council's Arts Plan 1995-97, as being targeted for growth. This proposed genetic engineering of the dance scene has made Brown "absolutely livid"; but New Balance has continued to be funded, and so she wonders if the proposal is really going to be implemented.
The title piece of the new show, Mapping A Route Home, is inspired by the poem, Home, by Paula Meehan, which is in turn inspired by Aboriginal song lines: "I have always loved her poetry, and the imagery and rhythm in poetry is similar to the imagery and rhythm in dance," says Brown. The music by Trevor Knight moves through genres as varied as Eastern, rap, and choral music.
Brown's other works in the show are Sculptura, the idea for which hit her late at night while enjoying a residency in Dieppe as part of L'Imaginaire Irlandais: "It's based on the concept of dance as a sculptural form - the dancers make up three aspects of the body, and the movement is sculptural." This is performed to music by Kodaly. This Happened is a solo dance of grief, again to music, by Kodaly: "It has to do with a lot of things that happened to me this year and last year," says Brown. "It's to do with a woman coming to terms with the possibility of never having a child. It's about things ending that mean a lot to you, and about unavoidable destiny. It's not exactly a barrel of laughs."
THE other works are We Hear You by the dancer Esther Thompson, in memory of the young Irish dancer, Fred Berstock, who died this year, and a tap piece by the group, Tapestry, which Brown says she is presenting to the audience "like a Christmas gift."