by Leigh Witchel
Of course Michael Keegan-Dolan’s “How to Be a Dancer in 72,000 Easy Lessons” wasn’t about how to become a dancer. There wasn’t even all that much dance in it; it was closer to a play with movement. The warp of the wry hour-and-a-half was an autobiography, with a history of Ireland in the last century twisted deftly into the woof.
Keegan-Dolan is the founder of Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre and its descendant, Teaċ Daṁsa. His dance works, often based on core repertory such as “Giselle” or “Swan Lake” are heavy on both theater and Irish content. And they’re always worth watching.
As the house announcements were made, Keegan-Dolan came out with a boombox, and he and his wife (and frequent collaborator) Rachel Poirier busied themselves with setting up the stage in ways that quickly became ridiculous. She began by using power tools on top of a plywood box. Sparks flew. When the announcement got to the part about not smoking, Poirier, on cue, lit up. All of this to Stravinsky’s overture to “The Firebird.”
Keegan-Dolan, in a suit with his white shirt fully buttoned but no tie or shoes, joined Poirier for the absurd task of taking shit out of the box. Chairs, a balloon, a dartboard, a disco ball, a child’s bike, a canister of helium. A cinderblock, a bouquet, a large mirror. They diligently put them around the stage in meticulous, insane preparation.
Keegan-Dolan may have been slanting more to theater here, but he’s a dancer at heart. He knew the score. At the whoosh where “The Firebird” became mysterious, he put on shoes. He and Poirier upended the box; she got on top.
After all that Keegan-Dolan finally spoke, a monologue about a healing episode in Guatemala. A healer rubbed him with an egg that he told Keegan-Dolan now contained all his negativity. He needed to bring the egg to the water and toss it over his shoulder. Two simple conditions: don’t drop the egg and don’t look back. Of course Keegan-Dolan wanted to do both.
That was our first glimpse into his Hibernian magical realism, and also his contrary soul. He doubled back on his biography and dropped us off the beginning of this episodic, impressionistic journey. His mother barely made it into an unstaffed hospital, so the only attendant at his birth was the soul of his dead grandfather, smoking in the corner. On top of the box, Poirier made sound effects and dropped things: balls, bags, a boiled egg.
Ireland wasn’t the subject, and it always was. Bobby Sands died of his hunger strike when Keegan-Dolan was 12. He was ambivalent about the hurt; he empathized with the one English boy in his class who was attacked.
As much as the stories jumped from one to the next, they were chronological and added up to a complicated autobiography. And a history. One drawback: the miking at St. Ann’s Warehouse occasionally made things difficult to make out.
Keegan-Dolan’s contrariness and resistance were a metaphor. When a boy screamed at him to stop dancing like a queer, or a priest punched him because he ate cake before dinner, the strategy was the same. Wait for them to leave, then go back to doing what he wanted.
By the time Keegan-Dolan described falling in love with ballet at age 18, the stage was littered with props like an abandoned playground. The music was a hit parade of the ‘70s and 80’s, “Safety Dance,” “Psycho Killer,” “Just Can’t Get Enough.” England and adversity poked in their ugly heads: a London cab driver telling him “Why don’t you fuck off to where you came from you fucking paddy cunt?” Which Keegan-Dolan turned into a musical number.
His revolution will be fought with standup comedy. “The Firebird” returned, hilariously, as he described his awkward first attempt at sex. Neither party knew what to do, so basically they lay together and waited. Somehow, he “brought forth my seed” and slam! The Infernal Dance of King Kastchei played.
Keegan-Dolan’s dance career was awkward as well. Told he was too turned-in to do ballet by his school, he landed a job in the revival of “Carousel,” but hated the repetition of eight shows a week. One night, he got whacked by a piece of scenery. A fellow Irishman in the cast hissed, “It had to be you.”
His first meeting with Poirier when he saw her perform, wound up in there, sort of. When she revealed herself to “The Blue Danube,” she was wearing a beard and spraying her crotch with cologne.
Describing his audition for Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Keegan-Dolan pulled off his shirt, then his hair – which was a wig. But his brother and his mother’s favorite, Paul died, strengthening Keegan-Dolan’s resolve.
Keegan-Dolan’s history and Ireland’s were inextricable. An IRA bomb went off in Manchester; Keegan-Dolan became a choreographer. When a director saw Keegan-Dolan’s movement for his show, he threw a tantrum and said it looked like Las Vegas. Keegan-Dolan apologized, begged him to come back, which he did a week later, loving all the changes. Of course, once again, Keegan-Dolan had not changed a step.
Keegan-Dolan’s fuse was longer than Ireland’s. On the centennial of the Easter Rising, his mother, after forbidding any discussion of the rising to avoid offending English in laws, then told Keegan-Dolan to show his brother-in-law the newspaper spread in the Irish Times about it. Evidently, passive-aggression ran in the family.
His brother-in-law made a crass joke about the photo: “They look like they’re shooting pheasants!” And Keegan-Dolan finally snapped. “Starvation! Eviction! Executions! Politics and prejudice were always woven through. Someone else asked him, “Didn’t you have a famine once?”
“How to Be a Dancer in 72,000 Easy Lessons” finally had a long dance section in it: a solo for Poirier to “Boléro” while Keegan-Dolan stayed in the back, holding the box tilted. It was interesting rhythmically but the hops and free arm movements were less compelling physically. At one point she did a Charleston, and nine minutes in, she did a pirouette. She spun ecstatically until she was dizzy, and as the music rose to a climax, she just grooved and bounced.
On the final crashes, she dragged a bag of dirt across the stage, stabbed the bag and tossed dirt about, panting as she was done. It was finally a release, similar to Keegan-Dolan snapping at his brother-in-law, but it didn’t feel as if we were led there. The solo felt too loose to take up the full score, and ironically, the pure dance section felt the most disconnected in the performance.
If there were any weak spots in “How to Be a Dancer in 72,000 Easy Lessons,” it was both the logic and danger of leaning on prior masterpieces. In his “Swan Lake” Keegan-Dolan triumphed with a work independent of the ballet. Here, he succeeded again, but you were left with the feeling he was asking the scores of “Boléro” and “The Firebird” to do a lot of heavy lifting.
Keegan-Dolan didn’t come to any easier a conclusion than in real life, but he did manage a satisfying one. Poirier sang a a line from William Blake: “It is right it should be so, Man was made for joy and woe” before she repeated Keegan-Dolan’s opening monologue.
The two left us at the opening night of Fabulous Beast, at Sadler’s Wells in London, with Keegan-Dolan’s original versions of “The Rite of Spring” and “Petrushka” and the ecstatic rush of energy he felt seeing them performed. The pealing, triumphant music leading up to the final tableau of “The Firebird” played and Keegan-Dolan and Poirier sat, eyes closed, not moving.
Earlier, he and Poirier did another chair dance, where they sat bopping to “Dance” by ESG, looking at us, but not in confrontation. They were sharing the moment with us. Keegan-Dolan’s humor and generosity makes him the anti-Jérôme Bel.
In 2002, Keegan-Dolan had become involved with yoga, and that idea of stillness being as meaningful as motion also ran through the piece. Keegan-Dolan’s choreographic inclination often is less is more – how to dance indeed.
The lights came on and brightened slowly, past a natural point, as the score kept playing. As the music hit a crescendo, they opened their eyes. It was the perfect logical place for the piece to end. And with a blackout, it did.
copyright © 2023 by Leigh Witchel
“How to Be a Dancer in 72,000 Easy Lessons,” – Michael Keegan-Dolan
St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn, NY
October 29, 2023
Cover: Rachel Poirier in “How to Be a Dancer in 72,000 Easy Lessons.” Photo © Teddy Wolff.
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