All together now

Even if you are madly, madly connected to someone in a relationship, and in love,” says choerographer John Scott, “it’s always going to be two people. You can’t become one.” This is the concept behind his new work, Left and Right which is being presented, suitably enough, with Missed Fit, a new work by John Jasperse, performed by the Irish Modern Dance Theatre. The combined production tours venues nation-wide from October 30th. Jasperse is regarded as the most important young choreographer emerging from the New York dance scene.

But does John Scott really have such a jaundiced view of togetherness?

“I am a romantic” he responds, laughing. “So, okay, let me say that for brief moments couples can function as single units! But they are few and far between! That’s why we are all the more grateful for those moments of union when they occur. In fact, as dancers, we are always thinking of different sides of our body, as in when you’re learning, it’s, “Put your right arm there, your left leg here’. When we were starting this piece what was fascinating to me was the idea that we were five dancers trying to move as one body. So what we try and do is make all the dancers into one body. At one point one person lies on top of another, on top of another, and another and so on and we try to move like one being. But then it breaks apart. So Left And Right is also about making a piece of modern dance itself.”

The dancers in the piece include Liz and Jenny Roche, Olwen Grindly, Joanna Banks, Philip Connaughton, James Hosty, Robert Jackon and John himself.

As for John Jasperse, who has recently created works for Mikhail Baryshnikov and his White Oak Dance Theatre and the Lyon Opera ballet, his piece too deals with misfits, I guess. Jasperse also doesn’t like the abstract nature of his work to be tied down by concrete concepts. Is there is somethingwe can “hook into” in the piece in terms of love, sex, marriage?

“I work in an abstract way and I know you want a hook but I, honestly, don’t think in those terms,” he replies, laughing. “Though a lot of those things do come up in the play, such as a certain kind of awkward struggle that is there in a relationship. So Missed Fit isn’t necessarily about love or sex but there are elements of all that in it. And the concepts I’m really dealing with is trying to adapt the body to the kinds of surfaces and situations where it doesn’t really fit. Like trying to fit a square peg ina a round hole. But there also are relationships between people that unfold and deal with similar ideas.”

“They try to adapt to each other in ways that actually accentuate the differences between them rather than people absorbing into one thing. And in ways the performance will encourage the audience to examine their own sense of “belonging”.