A not-noticeably-young audience cheered every piece performed by the Doug Elkins Dance Company on Wednesday night in Meeting House Square, but then Dublin has had no opportunity to see the work of Paul Taylor, Mark Morris and Tricia Brown, so that the trend in American modern dance to mix dance styles came as something new to them.
The mix of ballet turns, jumps and arabesques with break dancing worked well for comic effect in the second piece, Wholly Matrimony. For the full company of three men and four women, this was a largely satirical look at the ritual surrounding marriage, from stag parties to wedding nights. I was less happy with Nadia Tarr's costumes, especially limp tutus over pyjama bottoms. I was also unenthusastic about long passages of disco dancing, much of which could have been any group of dancers backing a Eurovision Song contestant. The music for the piece was as varied as the movement, ranging from Mozart's Marriage of Figaro to David Byrne and the Talking Heads.
Last Train to Philly was a less successful piece for four dancers, set to a mix of The Delphonics, John Coltrane, The Roots, The O'Jays and Patti Labelle. It had some attractive lifts, but was mainly based on hip-hop, martial arts, contemporary and break dancing.
Between the two pieces, the choreographer himself performed a short, unscheduled solo, Back Up. This was extraordinary, with the emphasis on hips and knees, while Elkins undulated like a tic-tac man without a bone in his body or a jellyfish attempting semaphore signalling, all set to what could only be described as Mozart on ecstasy.
Continues tonight at 10 p.m.
