Longford audience set to experience Night Dances at Backstage

Longford is set to experience a “ferociously exhilarating performance” of dance and live music this week as acclaimed choreographer Emma Martin presents her work in Backstage Theatre for the first time with Night Dances.

This show that has garnered rave reviews in every venue from The Abbey in Dublin to the Edinburgh Fringe. It is “an ode to the body and a visceral, sweaty love letter to dance in all its forms”.

Emma started out as a ballet dancer. She creates multidisciplinary work that has spilled into film, installation, opera and theatre,

Night Dances is a series of four vignettes, a work celebrating dance culture – from clubs to competitions to ceremonies.

“I'm really excited because it does something to people,” Emma told the Leader in advance of the show's Longford outing, “I think they leave the show feeling a sense of excitement and also thinking “what did I just watch”, it's a very experiential thing, that excites me.”

This is only the second time the performance has been hosted outside a large city: “It's nice to bring the show outside of Dublin. I think it's quite a different show to what people might be used to with a dance show.

“It's very sort of episodic. It's heavily music based, the audience feels the music as much as they see the dance.”

Performed to pounding beats by Daniel Fox and with atmospheric lighting by Stephen Dodd, Night Dances opens with a solo performance.

“The first one is a male solo. This piece is like the master of ceremony, it opens the entire performance. The dancer is Jonas Krämer. It feels almost “churchy”, the music features a very heavy organ. This was one of the first pieces I made.

“The story that inspired this was a Persian version of the story of Lucifer. He was thrown down from heaven and created a crack in the earth. He's trapped in this hole and all he has is the echo of God's voice.

“I was thinking about how we channel frustration and anger and put that into a solo,” Emma outlines.

The second part features a young dance troupe who launch into a ferocious routine of kicks, flips and cartwheels: “This is five freestyle disco kids who are usually solo competitive dancers. I've made a group piece for them where they perform solo features. They're tiny and what they do is incredible. I think it's a bit shocking for an audience when they see how they throw themselves around the place.

“Their part is about youth and their style of dancing. What they do is as virtuosic as ballet or any other form of dance. I wanted to raise it up and give it the respect they deserve.”

The third piece is an ode to the rave culture popular in Ireland in the 90s: “I had a glimpse of that when I was a child. It was terrifying to me, this idea that people go into a room with these crazy laser lights and dance for hours and hours and hours to the beat.

“This is dancing without the constraints of training. This is real dance. I wanted to make a tribute to that, to normal people dancing to music.”

The final section is a trio of female dancers: “In a way this is me looking back on my life as a dancer. It is going through ballet, finding another artistic voice for myself, but also finding pleasure in dance. Everything we decided on choreographically, has to be enjoyable, has to be pleasurable and has to channel a passion for dance.”

The Longford performance is part of a national tour: “We've performed in Cork, we've done Dublin twice, we have been in Edinburgh. Carlow over the weekend was the first show outside a city, I sat in the audience and I did feel like, okay, wow, people are not used to this type of show, but in a good way.”

Emma is inviting people interested in a unique theatre performance to the Backstage show: “Just come and experience something new for your eyes and ears!”

Night Dances comes to Backstage Theatre, Longford, this Wednesday, March 5, tickets from the box office.