\n<\/p>\n
\u201cFor some reason I wanted to be a dancer,\u201d Michael Keegan-Dolan said of his younger self. \u201cAnd then I realized I was really bad at it.\u201d Keegan-Dolan, a choreographer and director, was talking on a video call from his home in Dingle, a remote spot on the southwest coast of Ireland where he lives with the dancer Rachel Poirier, and where his dance company Teac Damsa is based. \u201cI was this kind of tragic character.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sitting next to him, Poirier chuckled. \u201cI didn\u2019t see him dance then,\u201d she said, \u201cso thank God I don\u2019t need to comment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Keegan-Dolan\u2019s dance-theater work \u201cHow to Be a Dancer in 72,000 Easy Lessons,\u201d which opens at St. Ann\u2019s Warehouse<\/a> on Saturday, springs from the tension between this thing he loved beyond all others \u2014 dance \u2014 and the realities of his body.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In a mix of stories and dance, he and Poirier trace the dogged efforts of a young Irishman, based on Keegan-Dolan, now 54, coming of age in the 1980s and \u201990s, struggling to find his place in the world of dance. It plays out against a backdrop of ingrained ideas about masculinity, I.R.A. violence and his feelings of being an unwelcome outsider in England, where he went to advance his training.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In ballet school Keegan-Dolan was told that his pigeon-toed feet were hopelessly untrainable. In the show he recalls being asked by a teacher, with as much kindness as she can muster, \u201cIs there anything else you might like to do with your life?\u201d He can\u2019t think of anything.<\/p>\n His salvation, it turned out, would be choreography, and through it, theater. After his last appearance onstage as a dancer in 1994, he turned to making dances and eventually rose to acclaim as a choreographer, first in opera and later in ensemble works of his own.<\/p>\n In 1997 he founded Fabulous Beast Dance Theater in the Irish Midlands, which, after its relocation to Dingle, became Teac Damsa<\/a>. (The name means \u201chouse of dance\u201d in Gaelic.) With those companies Keegan-Dolan has explored themes from Irish history and myth in well-received works that combine live music, theater and dance, like \u201cThe Bull<\/a>,\u201d \u201cRian,\u201d a reimagined \u201cSwan Lake,\u201d<\/a> and \u201cM\u00e1m,\u201d recently presented at Sadler\u2019s Wells<\/a>.<\/p>\n In \u201cHow to Be a Dancer\u201d he turns his lens inward. There are just two characters, the Dance Man and the Dancer, played by Keegan-Dolan and Poirier.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The work\u2019s intimate scale is partly a product of circumstance. \u201cHow to Be a Dancer\u201d was created during the pandemic and rehearsed at a theater down the road from Keegan-Dolan and Poirier\u2019s house. (It premiered in 2022 at the Gate Theater in Dublin.)<\/p>\n For Susan Feldman, the artistic director at St. Ann\u2019s, the small scale offered an opportunity. \u201cI\u2019ve been aware of Michael for many years,\u201d she said in an interview, \u201cand I\u2019ve seen many of his works, but our space isn\u2019t really conducive to presenting large dance pieces.\u201d<\/p>\n Feldman was struck by the honesty and humor of the show. \u201cI was really interested that it would be him dancing,\u201d Feldman said of Keegan-Dolan, who hasn\u2019t performed in decades and appears in a series of wigs. \u201cAt first I didn\u2019t even realize it was him.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The material that makes up \u201cHow to be a Dancer\u201d began to emerge before the pandemic, Keegan-Dolan said, but the period of forced inactivity gave him time to look back on memories that had dogged him for years. The number in the title comes from yoga practices that hold that 72,000 channels, known as nadis, circulate energy through the body.<\/p>\n The stories in the show draw upon the kinds of memories \u2014 small revelations, as well as shameful or painful experiences \u2014 that help shape our inner lives. Keegan-Dolan describes sitting in his home in Dublin, the youngest in a large family, watching Gene Kelly on television as his mother ironed. And how he felt when he took his first dance class, at 18, towering over the barre in rugby sweats in a room full of \u201c9-year-old girls in pink leotards,\u201d he says. He should feel ridiculous, he adds, \u201cbut instead I feel like I am in exactly the right place.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n After moving to London in the \u201980s, a period of deadly bombings by the Irish Republican Army, he remembers being called a terrorist and worse. Often he reframes such painful experiences as absurdist comedy. But the sting is still there.<\/p>\n Onstage, the stories roll out of him like well-worn yarns. And like all such tales, they contain some fabrication. \u201cI like the idea that you can change a memory, like you can change a story,\u201d Keegan-Dolan said. He is a natural storyteller, lively and funny, \u201cun peu cabot\u201d (a bit of a show-off), as Poirier put it in her native French.<\/p>\n The storytelling is layered with snippets of movement and dance, as when Poirier and Keegan-Dolan re-enact a happy-awkward dance at an Irish disco in the \u201980s, while bullies hurl insults from the sidelines. \u201cI wait for him to go,\u201d Keegan-Dolan says of one of them, \u201cand when he\u2019s gone I start dancing again.\u201d Nothing can deter his joy in movement \u2014 not even the fear of being punched in the face.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The more technical dancing in the show is left to Poirier, who has danced with the Rambert dance company<\/a> and the Merce Cunningham Repertory Understudy Group among other troupes. She is the dancer he would have liked to have been, Keegan-Dolan said \u2014 along with Rudolf Nureyev, Fred Astaire and Jacques d\u2019Amboise<\/a>.<\/p>\n The climax of the piece is a 15-minute solo performed by Poirier that the pair choreographed together to Ravel\u2019s \u201cBol\u00e9ro.\u201d Here, the memories that rise to the surface are hers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThere are bits of steps hanging there, dance memories,\u201d Poirier said, \u201cand the feeling of what it\u2019s like to be a dancer, all the struggles and the lack of money, and the greatness and the poetry that comes with doing the job we do.\u201d<\/p>\n And even as she pushes through exhaustion, the freedom and force of her movements, sustained by Ravel\u2019s music, suggest something about the power of dance, the thing that has kept Keegan-Dolan in its thrall all these years.<\/p>\n \u201cIt connects you to a part of yourself that is otherwise totally inaccessible,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd you don\u2019t even have to be good at it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n