Behind the Dark

Meet at Parkgate Street, Phoenix Park

*****

Something strange stirs, deep in the dells of Phoenix Park, and it’s not your traditional night-time sports of sex and drugs. New dance collective Loosysmokes has set its strange, unsettling show amid the trees of the city’s parkland. As is so often with these things, to describe it is to rob a little of its drama, so adventurous audiences should look away now. After following torchlight through the cluster of trees, the audience finds itself corralled by rough stages. (The audience could actually do with some bullying, and telling half them to kneel would help with the sight lines.) A female dancer crawls out, creature-like, from the shadows, bending her limbs and our own belief. Projections turn the low canopy into screens, while dancers whirl out and down from the shadows. A narrative of sorts takes shape, of some sad-eyed creatures are left living as outcasts in this weird outback. But this show’s pleasures are in the thrill of the performance, the strange sounds in the dark, and the pulse of a minimalist soundtrack that curls its menace about itself as the show unspools. The final scenes, in which you give up on gravity altogether, are deliciously dark in the night-time air. It’s an ambitious achievement from a company still stretching itself, and the first unmissable moment in this year’s festival.

Until September 19th