Come on in, the show has already begun…

How do you start a piece of dance? I imagine it is a lot like starting a bit of writing which, if you’re like me, evokes mild panic and unending procrastination. Commonly, in live performances, the ‘start’ often relies on the grace of the audience: we are asked to buy into an illusion, as the performer shuffles towards a glow-in-the-dark mark in not quite black-out lighting. Then, ‘like magic’, they appear before us, ready to snap into action.

However, this well-known visual fallacy can be, and often is, subverted, which is what more than half of the presenting choreographers chose to do at this year’s Spring Forward Festival. In Dublin, the audience frequently encountered a stage already inhabited by bodies, sounds or happenings before our bums had even hit the seat.
Tables turn. In this situation, we shuffle awkwardly towards a spot, half-committing to conversations that feel rude to complete, but too preemptive to pause. It’s a liminal state; one that, if well implemented, can make us receptive and intrigued. It certainly made for an intriguing throughline to investigate following this year’s festival! Let’s start at the beginning…

Only the least vigilant audience members failed to notice Jean-Baptiste Baele sat centre stage as we piled into the Samuel Beckett Theatre for his solo Nabinam. Despite his unassuming presence, leaning back, hands clasped and calmly observing the room, his presence shifted the dynamics between audience and performer. Each passing comment, cough or cackle could be heard by Baele as he adopted what could be coined The ‘I’m Waiting’ Beginning. Eventually, the house lights faded and Baele moved from observing to speaking – ‘spoiler alert – you are about to hear about me’. We had our chance to talk, to shuffle, to settle. Now, it was our turn to reciprocate the same patient listening. If Baele’s work is about reframing a history of whose stories get heard, then it seems appropriate that he disrupts the tradition of how stories are told.

Nevertheless, in Nabinam we are still offered the cue of the house lights dimming. But what happens if this cue never arrives? Exemplifying The ‘Keep The Lights On!’ Beginning, Olga Dukhovnaya performed her Swan Lake Solo with almost no changes in the lighting throughout. Ironically, one of the only times the lights went down was when Dukhovnaya sat static, in a floppy rendition of the iconic folded swan. Most of the ‘action’ took place with the audience just as illuminated as the performer. More than once, there were smatterings of hesitant claps around the room. Without any clear indication of a ‘start’, we sat in an expectant limbo. This blurred beginning distances the work from Swan Lake which, like all traditional ballets, relies on conventions, hierarchies and etiquette, and sets in motion Dukhovnaya’s defiant revolt against structures, whether they be political, societal or indeed choreographic.

Pre-show happenings can sometimes feel like a mild case of (the semi-dreaded) audience participation as they thrust into question our role as spectator and erase the wall behind which we can hide. The ‘Fourth Wall? Never Even Heard Of It!’ Beginning was assumed in Lovísa Ósk Gunnarsdóttir’s When the Bleeding Stops, which seeks to change the narrative around menopause in western culture. Gunnarsdóttir paced on stage in a set evocative of a living room, verbally greeting us and suggesting which seats to take as we entered the space. Similarly, in Atlas da Boca, two barefoot performers, Gaya de Medeiros and Ary Zara, blended into the incoming audience, sharing in chummy pre-show conversations before they embarked on an exploration of the trans experience. Both works touched on viscerally human topics through emotive and semi-autobiographical devices. The choice to shatter the barrier between spectator and performer created a remarkable intimacy that, hidden behind the fourth wall, might have otherwise been lost.

Outside of Spring Forward, watching nineteen of twenty-one consecutive works in ‘conventional’ theatre settings is a little unusual. In this context, a subversive beginning allows choreographers to transport the audience, at least momentarily, out of the auditorium and into the land of their work. Pre-set on stage, cast in gloomy lighting and entangled in otherworldly set designs, Deyan Georgiev’s Wired and Mélissa Guex’s Rapunzel used The ‘Welcome To My World’ Beginning to immerse their spectators. A dark atmosphere extended over us like a gauze as the boundaries between life and art were blurred, and we more readily surrendered to the performance ahead. In Rapunzel, the immersion did not stop there. We never see Guex enter, but we also never see her leave. Post-applause, she resumed her role, sitting down in a watery arena, launching the work into an eternal loop – a tale as old as time that will continue to be told, over and over.

One performance that might not be considered as having a ‘conventional’ staging is Oona Doherty’s Hope Hunt and the Ascension into Lazarus. The opening act of this solo saw us gathered on the street outside The Complex in Dublin, awkwardly packed and jostling to catch a glimpse of the action. Doherty’s world of fractured masculinity and nostalgia was conjured up through the nighttime cityscape, pumping car-stereo bass and performer Sandrine Lescourant’s erratic bursts through the crowd. For the expectant audience, there was no doubt the piece had begun, despite there being no stage. However, the same cannot be said for passers-by. When the ‘thumping black golf’ sped off into the distance, this unsuspecting “second” audience gasped, yelled and cussed in disbelief. With no safety in the knowledge that this altercation is part of a major European dance festival, they may not have initially questioned their sense of performance vs. real life. This sense is only handed back to them when we, the other audience, are ushered back into the venue, earning this sequence the title of The ‘False-For-Some-But-Not-For-All’ Beginning.

The whole notion of hazy beginnings and, in some cases, interminable ‘ends’ captures the heart of this whirlwind festival. Amidst the blur of dance, Dubliners and mad dashes between venues, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when Spring Forward 2023 began. And with the memory of twenty-one tremendous performances still oscillating in my body, it seems that it hasn’t really ended either.

Rebecca Douglass