Jockey
Samuel Beckett Theatre
Dublin
Rating: 4/5
“It’s about balance. It’s not about strength. It’s about technique. It’s about rhythm. It’s about feeling that rhythm. Stick to the rhythm of the horse.” If Emma O’Kane substituted the word “music” for “horse”, then this mantra would apply to her daily life as a dancer and choreographer.
But for the past 18 months, she has been riding racehorses and rhythmic concerns have become equine rather than musical. The move was inspired by Phillip De Burgh O’Brien, a racing journalist and bloodstock agent. He was also her grandfather, dying four years before she was born.
Her investigations have been borderline mono-maniacal. Not only has she ferreted out her grandfather's old clips, but she has immersed herself in racing by training to ride racehorses and tracking everything on a blog in Racing Post. Rather than a jokey hapless-dancer-becomes-jockey column, O'Kane seriously traced similarities with her dance career, like the meticulous training, injuries, and pre-performance nerves.
Jockey, created with WillFredd Theatre, puts this passion onstage, not with the raucous roar of the racetrack, but through a soft-spoken and multi-layered reflection combining movement, music, video and design.
The final section, where she describes, muscle by muscle, the physical sensation of riding a racehorse was impressive, but the emotional heart of the work lay moments earlier when she donned the race colours associated with her grandfather and sat gazing into space. In the reflective silence, she seemed fully placed in succession with blood ties she never knew.
