Robert Tanitch reviews Mám at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London EC1
Teaċ Daṁsa (House of Dance), founded in 2016 and famed for the award-winning version of Swan Lake in 2017, returns to London with a new work.
Mám is created by Teaċ Daṁsa’s artistic director Michael Keegan-Dolan and his company, which includes 12 international contemporary dancers, seven musicians from the Dublin-based collective, stargaze and concertina player Cormac Begley.
Keegan-Dolan lives and works in County Kerry and Mam was born out of his deep immersion in Irish life and heritage: the myths and legends, the landscapes and the musical tradition.
Cast of Mám
The company rehearsed in a community hall at the foot of the mountain Cnoc Bhreanainn.
Mám has three meanings: a mountain pass, an obligation, a yoke and handful of goodies.
The opening image is of a little girl in a Communion dress face to face with a concertinist with a ram’s head which suggests we might be in for an Irish rite.
The curtain behind them is swept aside to reveal the dancers lined up, dressed in black and wearing masks. They stomp their feet, clap their hands and punch the air.
Much later another curtain is swept aside to reveal the chamber orchestra lazing about and smoking.
Keegan-Dolan’s productions in the past have been notable for the savagery of their satire, the blackness off their humour and the cartoonish vulgarity of the characters.
I felt at any moment that the Behaviour on stage could end in violence and chaos. But nothing happens. Mám, mixing folk and contemporary dance, does not go anywhere.
There is no narrative, no spoken word, only the occasional shout and scream. It offers 80 minutes of frenzy without interval and relies entirely on the phenomenal energy of the ensemble cast who constantly regroup and at one stage build a close-knit human pyramid of movement.
The solos, duets and company work are all physically punishing. The gestures are wild: arms, legs, bodies and heads twist, turn, spin, circle, whirl and jerk. Two dancers confront each other, shaking their heads ferociously and seemingly forever, ignoring health and safety.
There were odd moments, amid all the frenzy, when I felt I was in Pina Bausch territory and especially when the cast started eating packets of crisps and even more so when one guy went round kissing everybody, dancers and musicians, male and female.
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