RIVERDANCE former principal, fashion icon, actress and respected choreographer Jean Butler brings her latest, ‘this is an Irish dance’ to Lime Tree Theatre this Friday 17.
It’s a passionate duet derived from traditional dance and performed by Butler with co-producer Neil Martin.
Her last dance commission, ‘hurry’ (2013), invoked the choreographer’s celebrated past in Irish step dance.
Butler’s new turn, ‘this is an Irish dance’, was created with the Belfast based cellist Martin who shares the stage. It further unearths her roots by returning to the relationship between live music and movement as the compositional departure point for the work.
Neil Martin is the composer. We are told that “inspired by the interdependent relationship between music and dance and the formal spatial relationship between dancer and musician that characterises her tradition, the piece explores the often invisible interplay between dancer and musician in live performance.
“The movement and music, created simultaneously through improvisation during the piece’s development, raise questions about who is leading and who is following”.
‘this is an Irish dance’ reveals dialogue – several at once. These are between music and movement, movement and sound, sound and space, space and sculpture, sculpture and body, body and instrument, cello and cellist, cellist and dancer, and ultimately a man and woman.
Book for this Friday February 17, 8pm at www.limetreetheatre.ie
