An elderly couple sitting on stage, exposing their bodies in beige and saggy white underwear: the theme of the performance is very clear. Yet does showing their skin ‘celebrate the strength of mature bodies and challenge the cult of youth’, as the programme notes say?
Maybe it doesn’t, but Dances Like a Bomb still tells a story. A lush green wall in the background echoes Poussin’s painting Et in Arcadia ego – an inkling of eternity which contrasts with our inevitable collapse. Romantic and tragic themes are interwined throughout: they jiggle, stretch, roleplay, carry, support and poke fun at each other, then slide around the stage, leaving only fading clouds of smoke in the dark.
‘Dance, dance, otherwise we are lost,’ said Pina Bausch. Finola Cronin – a former dancer with Bausch’s company – and Luc Dunberry know that dance is not an antidote to death. It’s just a way to tease it a bit.
Laura Jasmane
The Irish performer Finola Cronin is a Tanztheater veteran, and it shows in Dances Like A Bomb. In vignettes reminiscent of Pina Bausch, with whom she worked for a decade, she tackles the process of aging with deadpan charisma. She allows her partner to jiggle the sagging skin of her upper arms, to giggles from the audience; when he hooks her up to a drip like a hospital patient, she blows cigarette smoke right into his face, matter-of-factly.
Yes this extended duet directed by Jessica Kennedy and Megan Kennedy, the cofounders of Junk Ensemble, never quite coalesces into more than the sum of its parts. The push and pull between Cronin and Luc Dunberry can be pleasantly tongue-in-cheek, as when they start miming various ways of dying (neglect, gunshot, disembowelment). Still, no real tension builds up between them. They let loose in the closing scene, dancing to pop rock like nobody is watching. It’s a feel-good conclusion: had their relationship been fully fleshed, the potential was there for emotional release.
Laura Cappelle
It’s refreshing to see older bodies on the stage. In Junk Ensemble’s Dances Like a Bomb, Luc Dunberry and Filona Cronin move with wit and tenderness. They open with a playful showcase of their ‘flab’, pulling and playing with each other’s skin, undoing the weight of the topic.
The strength of the work lies in the way it counters the things you lose as you age with the things you gain. Stereotypes about elderly people are juxtaposed with a child-like free-spirited humour, without dismissing the fear that surrounds this process.
However, some scenes overstay their welcome and lose their rhythm. Then there is the elephant in the room – the looming presence of a large decaying teddy bear covered in flowers and leaves, which remains largely ignored. The visual distraction, despite its beauty, looks like an underdeveloped idea. It’s not the only one, but the performers’ emotional clarity and sharp physicality – as well as the rare opportunity to engage with aging on stage – still leave an impression.