CoisCéim Dance Theatre has gone German with this two-evening programme. The starting point was artistic director David Bolger's stint in Freiburg last year, where he created Out of Harm's Way with German dancers. Here he restages it with a company primarily of CoisCéim regulars. Hanging on by a Thread is a world premiere by German choreographer Irina Pauls, featuring the same dancers and a broadly similar theme: the dark emotional underbelly of contemporary life.
Hanging on by a Thread plays out the inner life of a woman (Muirne Bloomer) tormented by demons. Abstracted and beautiful passages of movement are followed by spasmodic speaking of random word-number combinations, and a male performer reciting twisted nursery rhymes in a baby voice. Matthias Engelke's challenging score sets hard electronic sounds against soprano arias. It all feels as if meaning is imminent, but also that elusiveness may be the point.
Bolger's piece, like Pauls', treats themes of compulsion, anxiety and dysfunction, leavened by quirky humour. The performers are trapped in a house and, it seems, forced to face or enact their fears. Marco Volta embodies and overcomes the stereotype of the lusty Italian as he humps everything in sight; another man is literally coaxed out of a closet; a woman confesses fear of rape, another holds everyone at gunpoint. The use of spoken text against passages of movement works well, but Bolger seems trapped between storytelling and abstraction.
· Until Saturday, then touring in the new year. Tickets: 00353 1 881 9613.
