OONA Doherty has been having a think about life’s big questions, our place in the universe our fleeting time on earth and the conditions all around us.  The dancer/choreographer, who has taken the contemporary dance world by storm, seems to have found everything a little too much, from too much work to the crises in the world.

Yet like many brilliant artists before her, she has used this as fuel for her work. Hints of loneliness and depression in the dance notes and the joy of sharing ideas with beautiful, talented people have brought us ‘Navy Blue’ – a 12-dancer piece for the Belfast International Arts Festival at the Mac which reveals much, including just how much it cost to make.

Never having gone to something she has done and been disappointed, there was much anticipation sitting down to the almost sold-out show at the Mac. I was surprised to see the dancers start moving to Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.2, but it made sense in that apparently he wrote it when overcoming a severe depression and in the midst of a creative crisis. 

The multi-diverse dancers command the stage like a subversive dancing army. Gestures and movements pay homage to ballet yet retain their fidgety contemporary dance feel as slowly they all one by one fall to the ground after intermittent gunshots. Between the shots the dancers cluster, finding safety in numbers while wondering who will be next.

It brought my mind to the Ukraine and reports of theatre workers now fighting in the army. As I wondered where it was all going a video projection played with the audience’s eyes, while blue blood seems to flow from each dancer to eventually cover the stage. Is it fabric, light, liquid? Will the dancer slip if they get up?

No, it turns into deep space as the dancers move as if in a gravity-free environment.  A voiceover by Oona thanks us for coming but you know it is not the end as she contemplates that her child and every inventor, explorer or corrupt politician started as a pink dot.  

Harvey Weinstein, Margaret Thatcher and Arlene Foster get a mention along with others who are “a little mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam, struggling for significance”.   

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The voiceover contemplates why violence exists on Earth and the  endless cruelties visited by the people of one corner of this pixel on the people of some other corner and as well as listing off a number of wars it also lists off just how much it costs to put on her tour, from childcare to costumes at three thousand Euros each to dancers at technical rentals at 15,000 Euros.

The movement is mesmerising, the lighting capturing the flow of the dancers’ movement, in solo or in unison. Oona finishes by thanking the Lord for insignificance, for being a non-essential worker:  “I will walk out of this theatre, and you will walk out of this theatre, and we will do unimportant things and those things, thank God, will matter.”

Navy Blue by Oona Doherty is touring to the end of November in Austria and France – not bad for a dancer who first found her passion for the art in West Belfast.

It’s great to see a dancer/ choreographer from the North of Ireland receive such acclaim and be in such demand on the global stage. Thanks to the Belfast International Festival for keeping bringing her back to us. The festival continues this week.

www.oonadohertyweb.com