Ireland is an object that stimulates the imagination. An island bathed in the sea, but above all a culture and a people steeped in a memory of fog and foam. It is this Ireland, tinged with symbols and tender impressions, as well as fervour and struggles, that choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan wanted to present to the Montreal audience yesterday with this Mám (which has multiple meanings in Irish Gaelic, from mountain pass to obligation and handful), created in 2019. About twenty dancers and musicians fully occupied the stage of the Maisonneuve Theatre.

Speaking of imagination, the play actually begins with an initially unsettling scene. A character with a goat’s head, holding a concertina (a small hexagonal accordion), stands behind a little girl lying in a white dress. About ten other masked characters appear. But what is happening? Rest assured: honour is intact, the masks are lifted, the goat-man is a musician who begins to play a traditional-style melody while the others start to stir, seemingly wanting to bring out hidden memories from their minds.

The concertina continues its course, the dancers twirl and organise themselves. Metaphor, perhaps, of the birth of a people in mystery and magic. For, in the Celtic mythology of Ireland, the goat-man (Púca) is an important character, feared for being a trickster, but not necessarily evil. Then, Puck Fair (Aonach an Phoic) is a traditional festival, one of the oldest in Ireland, which takes place every year from August 10 to 12 in Killorglin, County Kerry. Incidentally, it is in Kerry that the choreographer drew inspiration for their choreography.

The party takes off, always to the sound of the concertina that doesn’t stop for a second during the first part of the show, about 35 minutes! The movements of the troupe intertwine, the impulses take flight and then distil into one another, a few pas de deux interrupt the celebrities, which sometimes turn ill and the swaying of drunkenness (we know the Irish fight and get drunk). Sometimes two groups scream viscerally at each other. Sometimes, two individuals also spin around like dervishes, but with chairs in their hands! I thought to myself that if one of them dropped one, it could be catastrophic. But well, I dare to imagine they were securely tied up, in one way or another.

The second part brings a striking contrast, with the sudden arrival of an entire orchestra supporting the solo concertina, which, I must be honest, was starting to stretch things out, despite its remarkable virtuosity.

A violin, then, is added, along with a piano and a synthesiser, a double bass, a drum set, an oboe/English horn, a guitar. This section begins with a violin solo (a fantasy by Telemann).

It is a Euro-continental refinement that perhaps evokes a certain Europeanization of Ireland, and the confrontation between its roots and those of the continent. The dancers begin by watching the musical performance, as one would in front of a movie. Then, like the orchestra that adds muscle and modernity, the dancers intervene, in exchanges that are sometimes symbiotic, sometimes conflictual. One can sense the struggle between adaptation and resistance, between cosmopolitanism and nationalism, between the world and the roots of the land. These exchanges occupy the second part, where the music becomes groovy, sometimes threatening in a contemporary dissonant way.

A passage imbued with sensuality evokes a return to the fold, or to one’s roots: One of the dancers (James Southward) explicitly kisses the others, both men and women, dancers and musicians (except for one, rejected for reasons unknown, but it made the audience laugh). From there, one perceives a synthesis taking shape, very effectively illustrated by the music, without which none of this would be as comprehensible. It is the pen of Cormac Beagley, among others, that is responsible for it. The blend of rock, trad, groove, and atonality works very effectively. 

The finale is surprising. For after a crescendo of intensity driven by the musical score, and whose conclusion could have been satisfying, Keegan-Dolan chooses instead to present a coda visually and musically tinged with vaguely religious mysticism, ethereal and angelic. The artists sing Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. What is the message, exactly? I can’t say. The final image is powerful: a spotlight whose brilliance we receive directly in our eyes gradually fades, making me think of a lighthouse on the Irish coast, slowly disappearing into the deep night.

Despite a few slow moments here and there (I think the first part could have been trimmed by about ten minutes, and the second, perhaps as much), Mám is an inspiring and poetic creation about Ireland and the visions it evokes in our collective unconscious.

We must highlight the remarkable contribution of the musicians, including the concertina player (Cormac Beagley) and the violinist (Agnieszka Opiola), who excelled in her baroque-style interventions at the beginning of the second part.

Well, well beyond Riverdance and the usual clichés, Mám entertains and nourishes with evocative power and invention.

MÁM continues until October 4th and is presented by Danse Danse.

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