Colin Dunne: deconstructing Irish dance - Interview - Biography

Dance Magazine, Nov, 2003 by Deirdre R. Mulrooney

Dunne's graduate studies yielded a new opportunity when Yoshiko Chuma, former artistic director of the University of Limerick-based Daghdha Dance Company, commissioned him to create a piece for her May 2002 "Reverse Psychology" production. Dunne had been introduced to Chuma as a traditional Irish dancer, triggering her professional curiosity.

"Think[ing] about the steps and rhythms of traditional dance gave me the impulse to bring this dance form to the twelve dancers in my piece," says Chuma. "My impression was that since Colin came from a totally different background in dance, it might be a challenge for him to work with contemporary dancers." Dunne received credit toward his degree for the work. Chuma later collaborated with Dunne in the creation and choreography of The Yellow Room, which, premiered in January.

Dunne admits that choreographing for contemporary dancers was a challenge since they were not used to the precision involved in percussive Irish dance. "Percussive dance is scientific. It's left foot, right foot, and counts from one to eight," he elaborates. "There's not a lot off room in error in between."

With his newly acquired principles, Dunne created a duel for himself and Irish dancer Colleen Farrell for the August 2002 Vail [Colorado] International Dance Festival.

For another work, he steered clear of traditional Irish music, turning to Rimsky-Korsakov's The Flight of the Bumble Bee. "[I wanted to] highlight the virtuoso nature of the dance by using such a virtuoso piece of music," he says. The result was a witty one-minute-and-twenty-two-second solo at Charleston, West Virginia, in October 2002, where Dunne was teaching master classes in Irish dance at the Charleston Ballet.

Rick Justice, music critic of the Charleston Daily Mail, was intrigued "to see how he, like all great artists of all times, has stolen a little here and a little there and then added just a little of his own." Dunne's performance left justice pondering whether "the bee in question fell prey to the flying feet that seemed intent on stomping it to its end."

In November, Dunne created a duet with Mary Nunan, director of the Performance Stream of the masters program at UL (which runs side-by-side with an Irish Traditional Dance Performance Stream). Nunan, who performed with Dunne in The Yellow Room, describes his aesthetic as "an exciting work-in-progress."

Dunne says he would like to entice more contemporary choreographers to work with what he terms "open-minded Irish dancers," like himself. "Instead of this rather strange, clinical technique, which I had never questioned," he explains, "for the last six years I really have questioned it, and now I feel more truthful to myself. It feels more natural and like human movement now."

If Dunne develops a new dance language in this meticulous process of self-interrogation, all the better for the development of the art form, muses Nunan. The evidence will lie in the many adventurous projects this artist has underway.

Deirdre Mulrooney, Ph.D., is a journalist and dance critic based in Ireland. She is the author of Orientalism, Orientation, and the Nomadic Work of Pina Bausch.