For the second year in a row, the Auditorium Theatre opened its doors to an enthusiastic crowd of Irish dance fans eager to see the Trinity Irish Dance Company (TIDC) in its home town. There’s not too much Irish dance that goes on here that doesn’t include the Trinity empire in some fashion, but until last year, chances to see its top-shelf professional company were rare. Indeed, it had been a decade since TIDC had presented a full evening in its city of origin until last year’s concert at the Auditorium. The success of that winter mix of Trinity classics and new works prompted the venue to go bigger this year, with two shows on Leap Day.
After 40 seasons, and years of touring all over the world, artistic director Mark Howard and his protégé, associate director Chelsea Hoy, have developed a formula that works. It’s commercialized enough to attract “Riverdance” fans, with a little less kitsch and boatloads of creativity. But it’s only after seeing this company twice in two years that one realizes TIDC’s shows have become largely prescriptive, with more than half of this evening an exact replica of the previous year.
For example, there was Howard’s evergreen “Johnny,” which propelled his national profile when it premiered in 1991 on “The Tonight Show,” and two pairs of pieces performed back-to-back: “Soles” (2018) into “Push” (2014) — which have a pseudo-edgy, contemporary vibe with all black costumes and stark, dramatic lighting by Al Crawford — and the more traditional “A New Dawn” (2018) into “Black Rose” (2004).
“A New Dawn’s” program note waxes poetic about “tall, beautiful women arriving on the Irish shores … from Spain.” It is perhaps a reference to the Milesians, an ethnic group who arrived in Ireland from the Iberian peninsula after traversing Asia and southern Europe.
If I’m right about that, it’s not abundantly clear in the choreography — which is a soft shoe reel of winding, criss-crossing lines and circles — although a literal telling probably defeats the purpose, which, I think, is to communicate the multiplicity of cultures captured within this wholly Irish form. The score, played masterfully by TIDC’s in-house band, opens with what sounds like didgeridoo. “A New Dawn’s” companion piece, “Black Rose,” employs hard shoe dancing and rhythm sticks played on the floor while company percussionist Steven Rutledge strikes a massive bass drum called a lambeg. Thinking about the journey the Milesians took draws a metaphorical map to the very real connections between step dancing and other percussive dances which have influenced one another via migration: African dance, bharatanatyam, flamenco, tap, clogging.
And if I had to point to a specific theme for the evening, particularly in the parts of this show that were new, it would be that: the many cultural influences which accompany the interwoven histories of these dance forms.
Two distinct examples are “Goddess” (2004), by Seán Curran, and a world premiere by New York tap phenom Michelle Dorrance and Melinda Sullivan, who kicked off her career as a finalist on “So You Think You Can Dance.”
The latter, called “American Traffic,” is the more successful of the two. It opens on a line of four woman in brightly colored leggings topped by tailored business-like blazers (by costumer Kristine Fatchet). It could almost be called an Irish version of “Swan Lake’s” cygnets. With hands locked behind them and clasped to each other, the quartet rocks on heels and toes, exchanging their feet, without moving positions, in a cappella rhythmical magic. This scene opens up to the full company walking briskly, evoking images of an early morning commute. Regimented, straight-backed walking gives way to an easier, arm-swinging stroll — before work vs. after work, maybe, or Monday vs. Friday—which weaves curious patterns until the dancers find themselves in a straight line downstage. An extraordinary insert of hand clapping here, plus a cameo by Rutledge, hinting a role as a busker, leads to a series of sequences alternating between Irish and American tap dance. Time steps and paradiddles come as easily as skips and point hop backs for these seasoned professionals, who do a pretty good job dropping their shoulders and inserting some swagger into the tap portions of this piece.
It feels an authentic collaboration between two extraordinary forms, whose differences can be appreciated seeing them side-by-side in this way. “Goddess,” on the other hand, feels an artificial exploration of its inspiration, taking the rhythms of India translated to hard shoe Irish dancing. The exercise is an interesting one — distilling konnakol (a form of syllabic vocal percussion) and tabla music into Irish steps — but even after a session with members of Natya Dance Theatre to refine the more distinctly Indian portions of this piece, it still comes off a little like “It’s Small World After All.”
In addition to several musical interludes by TIDC’s exceptional musicians, a repeat of the rock-inspired spectacle “An Sorcas” (2019), and a special appearance by Irish fiddling master Liz Carroll, two more new works round out this program. “Listen,” by former “Riverdance” performer Colin Dunne, the opener, flirts with microphone echoes as a metaphorical call from Irish ancestors. And “Home” is a fun and playful take on the traditional tune “Boolavogue,” in which a group of friends gathers around the kitchen table in a percussive paradise of bottles, plates and spoons.
Lauren Warnecke is a freelance critic.
