Q&A with Michael Keegan-Dolan – MÁM – Bord Gáis Energy Theatre

Ahead of the opening of MÁM at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, we got the chance to put some questions to choreographer and Teaċ Daṁsa founder Michael Keegan-Dolan about his production. You can see the results below…

MÁM – Bord Gáis Energy Theatre – 13 – 14 July 2023
Find out more about Teaċ Daṁsa here.

Photo Ros Kavanagh

“Bringing together the virtuoso, Irish traditional concertina player Cormac Begley, the European classical, contemporary collective, s t a r g a z e and twelve international dancers from the Teaċ Daṁsa company, MÁM is a meeting place between soloist and ensemble, classical and traditional, the local and universal.”

This work is a collaboration with musicians Cormac Begley, along with classical, contemporary collective, s t a r g a z e. How did it come about? Did you approach the musicians involved? 

Yes, Cormac released his solo album, Cormac Begley in 2017. We had worked together already from 2011 to 2014 and by 2017, I had moved to live in the West Kerry Gaeltacht not too far from where Cormac lives. I listened to that album hundreds of times and I knew I wanted to work with Cormac, to build a dance and theatre show around this music and the way he played it. I had many conflicting thoughts about how to approach the undertaking. It takes time but by 2019, I knew I wanted to encourage a band and not from the Irish tradition, to gather around Cormac and set up a situation where things might start to happen. I came across André de Ridder as his ensemble, stargaze had been recently working with Lisa Hannigan. André was in Dublin conducting Duke Bluebeard’s Castle for Opera Ireland, (Enda Walsh directed the production). I met him in Fumbally Café by accident and the conversation started about the concertina. Together we settled on a band of seven, all regulars with stargaze, a violin, a double bass, piano, French horn and trumpet, oboe and cor anglais, flute and bass flute, and electric guitar.  Then we all gathered with a group of twelve dancers, (some new to me and others I had worked with for many years) in a community hall in West Kerry (Halla na Feothanaí) and improvised for weeks until something started to take shape.

What direction did you give the musicians about the style of the music you required, if any?

I tend not to direct in any traditional sense. I believe in a more natural way of doing things and being with things. Once you have gathered together a group of artists, dancers, and musicians for an agreed length of time with knowledge of the contract I have made with the Dublin Theatre Festival and other venues, to make a show, people start getting busy.

Creating a certain quality of the atmosphere in a space feeds the experience and initially, you focus on the quality of a daily routine of cleaning the space, training, working, eating good food, sleeping in comfortable accommodation, etc. Everything leads on quite naturally from this. There are many discussions, collective and in smaller groups but not too many. Action leads to reaction, needs must, and necessity is the mother of invention.

Was the score written before you started to work with the dancers?

No, nothing was written in advance.  Cormac knows hundreds of tunes and we did have two short periods of preliminary r&d in advance of the main rehearsal period so we did hit the ground running as it were. But in many ways, we started from zero (not really possible as every artist brought so much with them into the adventure)

This production came immediately after the hugely successful work Swan Lake / Loch na hEala. Did you feel the weight of expectation on it? 

Honestly, no. I have been around a long time now to know that what goes up must come down and all of that and everything. I remember in 2003, I made a show called Giselle and people really liked it, it was a big success. At the opening night after-party, emotions were running high, it was like we had won an Oscar or the All-Ireland or something. I was standing there watching this celebration when a very sensible man came up to me and said, ‘ye know this success, tonight is just the beginning of your next failure,’ and he walked away.  It was a bit of a downer but an interesting thing to hear on that particular night.

I get busy focusing on what I am doing and this usually assists me to avoid unnecessary anxiety about what anything might become or not.  Expectations reduce the space for interesting and unexpected outcomes.  Unconscious needs, wants or desires often relating to a sort of success and failure metric can be real obstacles to creativity.

This was originally part of the Dublin Theatre Festival in 2019, so it will be known to many. Has the work evolved much in the time since? Do you ever alter your work after it is first staged? 

I just keep working away with the company and the show grows in its own way over time.  It gets better, it gets worse, it gets longer and then shorter.  Some performers come and go but the essence of what we discovered in Halla Feothanaí is what we need to recall and nurture. Somehow the rest of the stuff around that, are just details that can be drawn out or reduced. Remembering why you made a piece of work, if there was a way, can be useful.  MÁM has been to many places now. It’s always different.  It’s a big piece of work and just managing all of the logistics well can be enough to keep us busy.  Generally, it’s a show-second outing where any big changes are going to happen and usually, it’s about trimming away anything that’s excessive or unnecessary as painlessly as possible.

What’s next for Teaċ Daṁsa? Is there anything new on the horizon you can let us know about?

Yes, I am making a new show next year. It’s going to be brilliant.