ONE OF the most memorable shows of the 2007 Galway Arts Festival was Featherhead Productions’ Slat, an astonishing piece of dance theatre/performance art initially conceived by composer Trevor Knight, featuring design by artist Alice Maher, and the amazing Japanese butoh dancer Maki Wantanabe.
That same creative team have come together again for what promises to be one of the most fascinating shows in this year’s festival, The Devil’s Spine Band, which takes its inspiration from Oscar Wilde’s memorable 1882 visit to the mining town of Leadville, Colorado.
Talking about the show during a break in rehearsals, Knight revealed some of the ideas that fed into the creation of the show.
“My interest in the story started when I was with Donal O’Kelly when we were doing Catalpa in Colorado,” he begins (Knight composed and performed the music for Catalpa ). “One day I visited Leadville and as I went by the opera house there I noticed a plaque commemorating Oscar Wilde’s visit.
“I hadn’t known anything about it but that got me curious and I started reading up about it all. Then sometime later, I was doing a residency in Cobh with Alice Maher and I met Malcolm McLaren and he had this amazing theory all about how Oscar Wilde was the founding father of rock’n’roll.
“And I was interested in doing something about the Wild West so all those strands came together in devising this show.”
Whereas Slat was an intense, at times unsettling, work on the theme of feral children, The Devil’s Spine Band is a show of a very different character.
“After Slat I wanted to do something more light-hearted,” Knight states. “We’re going to seat the audience all around and the dancers and musicians will be moving all through them. None of them are playing a set character. Costumes will be interchangeable. We want to blur the line between the performers and the musicians; the music is on an equal footing as a component of the show.”
Knight expands on the musical element.
“The music will form the narrative, there are different aspects to it, some of it is like an ambient soundscape, we want to create this mythical western atmosphere,” he says. “There’s also a bluesy rock sound to some of the pieces, we found that worked really well with the butoh dancers interestingly.”
Also featuring in this Featherhead show are the extraordinary performer Olwen Fouere, butoh dancer Gyohei Zaitsu, and the guitarist Ed Deane and percussionist Noel Bridgeman.
As with Slat, the design is by leading artist Alice Maher, who has collaborated with Knight on a number of projects down the years. She describes the design of the show.
“Visually it’s very big, there are these structures, which almost seem like an installation, they are bit like trees, they have a textured surface and are kind of metallic which is a reference to the fact that Leadville was a mining town,” she says.
“Unlike Slat it will all be on the same level, it will be set up like a cabaret with tables all round, people can come and go with their drinks from the bar, it’ll have that ‘clubby’ feel.”
It should all make for an experience every bit as memorable as Slat proved to be.
The Devil’s Spine Band is on at the Radisson Live Lounge today, tomorrow, and Saturday at 8pm nightly. Tickets are available from the festival box office on Forster Street and through www.galwayartsfestival.com and www.ticketmaster.ie
