THIS SATURDAY, The Black Box hosts a major new Irish dance show, Noctú, choreographed and directed by Breándan de Gallaí, the dancer who replaced Michael Flatley as the lead in Riverdance.
A native of Gweedore in Donegal, de Gallaí was with Riverdance from the very beginning when it was staged as an interval act in the 1994 Eurovision. With the show becoming an international smash, was it daunting for him to step into Michael Flatley’s shoes as its lead dancer?
“The daunting part was doing the lead not stepping into Flatley’s shoes,” he declares during a break in rehearsals at Tallaght’s Civic Theatre. “It was a very big role, very demanding physically. It was also quite a shift in terms of the Irish dance aesthetic, it was using the upper body more.
“I had spent a year on a scholarship at a dance academy in Chicago so I was quite used to contemporary dance and using my upper body but applying this to Irish dance was very new. Being the lead of a massive global phenomenon at a time when everyone was talking about it, that was the difficult part but once I had done it a few times it just felt right and I really loved it.”
Having experienced worldwide success with Riverdance, de Gallaí now makes his debut as choreographer/director with Noctú. He outlines the ideas and themes that inform the show.
“Noctú means to bare or reveal all and the idea of the show is to strip away what people’s idea of an Irish dancer is – the ringlets and migraine-inducing dancing dresses, or the bling and the fake tan associated with the commercial show aspects,” he says. “It takes all that away to show the dancers as they really are, as really hard workers.
“It’s also possible for me to do with Irish dancing what I’ve always wanted to do which is to bring it to the next level. The Irish dances in it are quite contemporary and really push the boundaries of the form. We dance to numbers by everyone from Imelda May to Stravinsky, the dance numbers are quite exciting but there’s also a lot of dialogue. We try to reveal the inner dancer to the audience.”
De Gallaí devised a previous show based on the myth of ‘Balor Of The Evil Eye’ but the necessary financing that would have let him stage it didn’t quite happen. Luckily with Noctú, RTÉ heard he was working on a show and decided to make a six-part series on the production, following it through from initial auditions to opening night. The series starts broadcasting at the end of July.
Returning to the show itself, de Gallaí reveals some more of the kind of music that features in it.
“There’s some original music from the Balor production,” he says. “There are two pieces from that by Joe Csivi. There’s some traditional Irish music, Madeleine Peyroux, Leonard Cohen, and a band called Cake who do a fantastic grungey version of ‘I Will Survive’.
“I think the score lends itself well to the messages within the show. The show is also about marginalisation and trying to carve out a niche for yourself; it features three central characters who are all marginalised in some way and they kind of discover each other.”
Alongside his prowess as dancer and choreographer, De Gallaí also boasts some impressive academic credentials and these also have a role in Noctú’s creation. A qualified physicist, in recent years de Gallaí completed an MA in ethno-choreology at the University of Limerick and is currently working on a PhD at the same institution on arts practice.
“Ethno-choreology is dance anthropology,” he explains. “Part of the requirement of the PhD is to do two major performance pieces so that was where the idea of the show first began. In a way, Noctú is an ethnochoreological look at the world of Irish dancing.”
Now there’s a mouthful! But aside from its academic dimensions Noctú also promises to be an absorbing, exhilarating, evening of dance. It’s at the Black Box for one performance only, on Saturday at 8pm.
Tickets are €22/18 from the Town Hall on 091 - 569777 and www.tht.ie
