Created by Emma Martin with Music by Daniel Fox (Girl Band)
The National Stadium, 13-16 October (Preview, 12 October)
Live Stream, 15 October (On Demand, 16-23 October)
United Fall and Dublin Theatre Festival present the premiere of Night Dances, a series of dance poems that express the invisible energetic, connective tissue that joins us.Night Dances is created by dance maker Emma Martin with music by Daniel Fox (Girl Band) and is comprised of 4 poems – LOST BOY, GOD IS A GIRL, RED and THE RAVER.
Extra tickets for Night Dances at The National Stadium 13 -16 October are on sale from Wed 15 at 3pm, priced from €20 at dublintheatrefestival.ie with the preview taking place on 12 October. Night Dances will also be available as a live stream on 15 October and will be available to view on demand from 16 October through to 23 October.
A series of dance poems that express the invisible energetic, connective tissue that joins us
This is an assault on the senses and an ode to the body,
all breathing the same air, blood, sweat and tears
Love, fury, pride sharing a moment
Life, death, magic… humanity
Punch a hole into the future
A deep groove for our eyes, ears and hearts
This one is for all of us
The time for dancing has come
Contains loud music.
Night Dances is comprised of 4 poems:
LOST BOY: A solo for a male dancer. Inspired by the story where Lucifer is God’s lover throw down from heaven, with only God’s voice echoing “go to hell”. The echo was all he had left to sustain him. We are all born innocent and dependent. Babies don’t hate. Hatred is nurtured by society.
GOD IS A GIRL: 5 young girls, bright eyes, blood pumping together, dancing their hearts out. They whip their limbs and ponytails out into world like it’s their last breath.
The most potent of life stages distilled into powerful physicality, all fury and might and faith. They’re the future and they’re fearless.
RED: a trio of women. Triple Goddess, three witches, trinity, 3 furies. Weaving conjuring shapeshifting through the ancient, excessive, iconic, profane. The Statue of Mary cracks open. She smiles. For our mothers, grandmothers and great-mothers.
THE RAVER: “When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight… I shall try to fly by those nets” (James Joyce) Floating in music and laserbeams.
The essence of Night Dances.
“When I was around 12 my 16 yr old brother told my folks he was hanging out at his mates house, when actually he went to a rave in Dublin that my cousin was DJing at. My mother found out and we drove up to Dublin, parked outside the SFX. All I remember was looking into a vast sea of sweaty bodies, the lads mostly topless floating in music. My memory plays this scene back in slow motion. Contorted faces, wrung out bodies, eyes cast upward towards laserbeams of light, furrowed brow adorned with beads of sweat… I felt simultaneously terrified and excited. This was dance and it was beautiful.
In Spring 2017 I made a piece, This Thumping Heart,with Dance Republic, for ten teenage girls. During this process an unlikely scene played out in my head: a group of young freestyle dancers gate-crashing a Sufi- Zikr prayer gathering – imagine if that happened? The ideal outcome would be that they look at each other and see they are on a similar plain. They both have so much hope and ambition for their dance, putting all of this emotion and passion into their dancing – the kids just haven’t named their god, while the men have. Freestyle is an aggressive and virtuosic competitive style of dance and the girls who take part are seriously dedicated. I like to consider their passion and dedication as a form of spirituality.
I spent too time watching videos of Sufi Zikrs, TikToks of commercial dance kids in LA, Tibetan ritual dances, Dance Moms, Voodoo ceremonies. They all have something in common: effort, exertion and intention. They’re all aspiring towards release and pleasure, whether it’s an immediate consequence or a state of being promised in the future.
Over the last few years I have built up a considerable collection of photos of grottos and virgin mary statues on my phone. Eyes cast downward, hands opened gracefully and demure. I want to frame them all.
Another choreographer I know staged a genius take on Milton’s Paradise Lost. From him I learned a new version of the story about Lucifer.
I sat with all these disparate thoughts and obsessions until they slowly started to coalesce like liquid mercury into series of dances, where the dance isn’t “about”, it just “is”, because dancing is enough.
The music must be rough and raw. I’d been revisiting music from my years ago, an incoherent mixture of drum and bass, grunge, breakcore, punk and discovering new. Making little sound collages and mixtapes. I first heard Girl Band back in 2014 and used to play some of their tracks in the studio as juice for the dancers. They sounded like a chainsaw fed through a wall of bassbins. Rough and Raw. I emailed Girl Band’s bassist and producer Daniel Fox. He made a new band for Night Dances. A violent joy to dance to.
Probably inspired by Ireland, attempting to challenge the body language and culture that’s the fabric of the environment I felt growing up. The culture of control and denying the body and it’s an attempt to release that. This piece wants to share a lot of emotions: empathy, hope, connection, freedom. I feel a mixture of love and rage driving the energy of it. Rage for the desensitized and numb society we have created. Love for our inherent naivety and vulnerability. We hold history, good and bad, in our bodies, and if it’s channelled with intent maybe it shares something with the sacred.
The ambition of this piece sees me drawing together strands of my previous work with young dancers and live music. It’s a collision of dance and live music in a visceral gig experience that feels kind of raucous and bold.
There’s so much division in the world right now. And we’re at a point now where possibly empathy is the only thing that’s going to get us through. Night Dances is not about something, it’s for something, and this intention is where maybe some kind of feeling of “ceremony” can hopefully be felt. What we want to leave behind and what we want to carry towards the future.
May the salt from our sweat unite us.”
- Emma Martin
Choreographed in collaboration with the dancers: Robyn Byrne, Aoife McAtamney, Javier Ferrer Machin, Ryan O’Neill, Jessie Thompson, Dance Republic
Designer: Katie Davenport
Lighting Designer: Stephen Dodd
Band: Daniel Fox, Jamie Hyland, Brian Dillon
BOOKING
Venue: The National Stadium
Preview: 12 Oct
Dates: 13-16 Oct
Times: 9pm
Tickets: €20–€30
Booking: dublintheatrefestival.ie
Duration: 60 mins. approx., no interval
*Night Dances will also be available as a live stream on 15 October and will be available to view on demand from 16 October through to 23 October.
Funded by the Arts Council of Ireland / An Chomhairle Ealaíon
Supported by VISUAL, Carlow
ABOUT UNITED FALL
Led by dance maker Emma Martin, United Fall’s work is known for its ambitious multidisciplinary work of a highly visual and atmospheric nature.
Emma began creating shows in 2010, following a sabbatical as a ballet dancer during which she obtained a degree in Drama and Theatre Studies and Russian from Trinity College, Dublin. From 2010 to 2014 she made work as Emma Martin Dance.
She creates work that often combines dance, live music, theatre and distinct visual universes, always with the raw expression of dance as it’s driving force.
Recent works include: I AM IRELAND (2020 RTE/ Culture Night Commission) Birdboy (2019) Orfeo ed Euridice (Irish Tour 2019, Galway International Arts Festival 2018), Girl Song (Noorderzon Performing Arts Festival (Groningen) 2018, Dublin Theatre Festival 2017. A co-production with both festivals), Dancehall (a co-production with Dublin Theatre Festival 2015), Tundra (a commission from Dublin Dance Festival, in a co-production with Centre de Développement Chorégraphique, Toulouse 2014).
United Fall is Associate Artist both at Visual Centre for Contemporary Art and of Dance Ireland and receives strategic funding from the Arts Council.
Recent productions Emma has collaborated on include: Arlington (Landmark/ Galway International Arts Festival 2016, Abbey Theatre, St. Ann’s Warehouse), Danse, Morob (Olwen Fouéré/ The Emergency Room 2017), Taming of the Shrew (Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre 2016), Romeo & Juliet (Gate Theatre, Dublin 2015), Luck Just Kissed You Hello (HotForTheatre/ Galway International Arts Festival 2015), Teh Internet is a Serious Business (Royal Court 2014).
https://twitter.com/unitedfalI