Transcript
Lou Cope talks to Michael Keegan-Dolan
21 July 2020
Lou: Hello, Michael Keegan-Dolan! Thank you very much for joining me. How are you doing?
Michael: I'm doing very well. Thank you. And thank you for having me on here.
Lou: It’s a great pleasure. I am presuming that you are up some lovely hill in Ireland. Is that correct?
Michael: That is correct. I am up a lovely hill... yeah, I don't know what makes a hill into a mountain or a mountain into a hill, but I'm halfway up a mountain. And I've been living here for three years... three years nearly to the day
Lou: Wow. I can see you're looking out of windows on both sides of you. What can you see?
Michael: On that side, I can see a huge green hill that has been reclaimed mostly by a farmer for a sheep. And on that side I see an enormous ash tree that has been trying to grow, I'd say, on that site for about 150 years, and not making a huge amount of progress. It's still there. It's kind of a monument to something... to endurance or something. It’s beautiful.
Lou: It keeps going. Is that a metaphor for something for you?
Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I kind of feel like that... interestingly this year, like the weather has been quite strange this year, in that we had two months of drought, the whole of April and May, which has kind of helped with the lockdown scenario, because drought also means sun, but there were two months of drought... so everything was a bit thrown here because traditionally it's not that dry in this part of the world, but it got very dry.And then we have this wind, it’s a local wind, called the ‘Scairbhín’. It's kind of the wind that marks the end of, kind of, the bad weather and the beginning of the good weather, but it hit quite late, and a lot of the leaves have come out and it just bleached all the leaves off a lot of the trees.So the trees around here this year, are kind of half-finished in that they won't ever fully express their glory this year because they got hit quite hard. And then it rained for the whole of June.Lou: Nice, that helps.
Michael: So now it's kind of fine again today, but it's been a strange year, not only in relation to pandemia, but also with weather.
Lou: Wow. It really does sound like a metaphor. It makes me feel funny. Okay so, has your experience of being there changed now that it's no longer a choice and that you’re enforced?
Michael: I suppose it has changed, but it was a choice. Yeah. That's the answer, I suppose, like... I want to be here, you know, to move here, actually was quite challenging and difficult and I had to turn my life upside down, in order to move to this part of the world.
So, no, I really wanted to be here and I want to be here and I'm here. I suppose more... it's more that... there has been a change of perception of here. Like even today, just before I arrived to sit down at the computer to talk to you, like I was on a, I was just visiting my brothers here.
I visited a beach. And the beaches, which are busy and they're busy with Irish people. Which would normally... they would be busy with Dutch and French and German and American. Well, the Americans generally don't get off the buses. They kind of pull up in the car park, take a few snaps and jump back on the bus to go to the next beach!
It's not their fault. It's just the way, you know, marketeer tourism works these days. But, it's interesting to see other people, Irish people spending time in these places. That kind of, they kind of maybe didn't spend as much time in over the last 10 to 15 years, because mostly they went to the sun... understandably they went looking for good weather.
So like, does it... yeah, there's a lot of shifts going on. I think it's hard to keep up actually, things are moving very fast.
Lou: Just when you feel like you understand it, it's all changed, hasn't it? Michael: Yeah, I don't feel, I never felt like...
Lou: You haven't reached that point. Okay. Fair enough. Okay. So what should you have been doing during this time then? What has it stopped you from achieving?
Michael: Oh, well achieving nothing. I have no interest in achieving anything really anymore. Well, we were... I was kind of lucky with the timing of it, in terms of a career trajectory, but I don't really have a career trajectory. I was writing... I was going to be... see, yeah, I was going to be... I was developing... it was development time for me now, it's time when the next thing was going to start to incubate.
Well, I have a very particular way of working, you know, so it's... I don't go around making pieces of work around Europe, or around the world, partially because I'm not very good at it. And partly because I don't get asked, but mostly because I don't want to. But yeah, so I kind of wait and then I write, and then I raise the money and then we produce, and then we tour.
So we just finished... well, actually my ‘coming into lockdown’ story was quite intense because we were on tour and we just got out of New Zealand before New Zealand locked down, which was a great... I mean, I kind of wish I could, if circumstances had been different, I might've stayed in New Zealand because that is a very beautiful and magnificent place.
But I had to go to London, because I had a premiere as part of a triple bill at Sadler’s Wells. It was a Nico Muhly evening. And I was working... the composer, Nico Muhly, and I was working with Sam Amidon, who had worked with Nico on a piece of music called ‘The Only Tune’. And I was working with the Britain Symphonia and eight dancers and Sam Amidon and Nico Muhly was there and the premiere was supposed to be Thursday, the 19th of March and on the Saturday... it was on the Sunday night, I lay in my bed in the DoubleTree Hotel in Islington and decided I was going home. Because things were really getting bad in Italy and I thought, I don't want to get the coronavirus in a DoubleTree Hotel. If I’m gonna get it, I want to get it at home. So I went home and Sadler’s closed up shop a few days after that.
Lou: So it didn't happen, the show didn't happen?
Michael: No, but it will happen. Because Alistair Spalding is that kind of a fella, you know, he’ll make it happen, but I mean, I was sad it didn't happen, but at the same time it would have been... I felt it would've been wrong to be part of something that required a thousand people to come into a space and share a theatrical event at that particular time based on what I knew, it just felt wrong.
But also it just, it was becoming a really sad time. Like, it felt not only because thousands of people were dying, but like, the way the English prime minister was responding initially, I found really confrontational. Like, I really got a sense that the markets were being protected first and foremost, and people were secondary to that.
And I found that really confronting and sad. So I was like back here in Ireland, yeah, things have been handled a little bit differently, so I was a bit more comfortable with those politics. So I was happy to get home.
Lou: It was a really difficult time, wasn't it? Because the unthinkable was happening, so you had to kind of get your head around that and then yes, you're turning to people like Boris Johnson for advice, and that's an unusual experience, for me anyway. So yeah, you had to do quite a lot of thinking quite quickly, didn't one. And you decided not to stay in your hotel in Islington.
I think maybe you made the right choice. Although yeah, New Zealand might've been nice. Okay. Well, you know, we look forward to that appearing one day, I guess maybe the spring or the summer, is it, do you think?
Michael: Yeah, well, I think I can’t speak for Alistair or any programmer, but the ones I have spoken to, like they've cancelled their 2020 programs. So they will probably deliver them in 2021. And then anything that should have been happening in 2021, will happen in 2022, so the whole thing has been kind of kicked down the road. That's really how it's affected me, maybe in a more challenging our problematic ways that our model; how we existed as a company has been... kind of the cycle has been broken entirely. And then a lot of the reserves we would have generated to give momentum to the next vision, our project...
Lou: Financial, you mean, or?
Michael: Yeah, our financial reserves are kind of being used up, and we’re not making any money cause we can't tour.
So I mean, I'd like to think that all stories have a happy ending. So I like to think that in a few years, all of this will somehow have been a very useful and transformative experience. But right now I'm just trying to keep my sense of humour about the whole thing.
Lou: Yeah. Okay, so there are a couple of themes that I wanted to talk to you about, and that seem to me to be at the heart of your practice, but also that seem resonant now, I think, and those themes are: time and place, and you can tell me if I'm wrong, and they’re not themes that are at the heart of your work.
So basically from what I hear, from what I read, from what I gathered about you, you seem to have quite a clear relationship with time, by that, I mean that you're very careful about how you manage it. As you say, you don't do things you don't want to do and you don't fake anything I think, and you believe...
Michael: Well you try not to... I mean, you know, the mind is so complex, so many layers, even with the best of the intentions in the world, you can still talk... you can still unconsciously talk absolute nonsense, even though you might think, you know... you look at our great leaders. I mean, they think they're great fellas.
They think that they're being truthful, but they’re just talking nonsense, are lying. So I like, yeah, I'm definitely in the pursuit of speaking from a place that's connected to something very real, but you know, it's not easy when you're hungry, even when you're hungry, that gets compromised. So yeah, I'm interested in that.
Lou: Yeah, the pursuit is good enough, I think. I think none of us manage it entirely, do we, but the pursuit of authenticity and yeah, not faking it and not, like you say, not following a model that doesn't suit you and that you don't believe in. And also the way that you allow time for ideas to appear in the space, and you allow time for shows to find their way to the light, I suppose.
I'm going to quote you if I may, ‘When something needs to happen, let it happen. If something needs to occur, it will occur. I approach my projects like this. If a dance or theatre work needs to come into existence, it will, and nothing will stop it’. It's good huh? Do you remember that?
Michael: Yeah, I remember writing that. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I mean, I think that sounds pretty good. But I mean, that's probably quite hard for someone who's starting out to hear, you know, it's like, you know, when you're younger, you think, you know, you're thinking differently about the world and you want to show the world what you know, or what you feel and that's good as well.
And then maybe you force things to make things happen, and maybe at the time that's good. But for me now, forcing just one work, it just causes you all sorts of problems. So I'd like to believe now that, well, you know the way we spend most of our life worried about raising finances so we can pay dancers and pay our electricity bills and so forth and so on.
But like, I like to... you know, and it's so easy to be absorbed, consumed by this pursuit of finding the resources to make the work you can make. I'd like to believe, you know, that you can easily become a victim in that scenario, you know, if you ever go to an arts conference where people are talking about the work, but very often the conversation quickly ends up in people talking about their difficulty in finding the resources or the opportunities, or the supports to make the work.
And we can end up sounding like victims, like artists, you know, ‘I can't get enough money for this and that’. And I don't want to be that like... so one way I've coped with that feeling of kind of helplessness is to kind of celebrate it and think it's actually a wonderful thing, because if it's going to be, it's going to be, so don't worry about it.
Like, I have a pretty tricky temperament for working in the theatre, or more for working in the theatre, in the reception, after the show, or at the parties, or at the award ceremonies. Like I don't do them particularly well. So I've done a really good job at wrecking my career, probably over the years of telling various people to go fuck off, you know, when I shouldn't have.
So in theory, I really shouldn't have any career, you know, I shouldn't be, you know... but for some reason I've been able to make a certain amount of work. And I like to think it's because I had to, and it was going to happen in spite of anything I did or said or worried about. Because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, like how can you, you know... we could think about what we do. It's counter (to) so many, strong ideologies, but somehow art, our work, our theatre, our dance, somehow it comes into existence. And I like to think that it does that because it has to, and it's got very little to do with me.
Lou: I totally understand what you're saying. And I also understand that you say it's hard for some people to hear, but you have earned the position you're in and you have made the choices you've made so that you don't have to, you know, just jump when someone tells you to jump. But that can be true at any point of a career, can’t it, you know, obviously, ‘bread first, ethics later’, I know that, but even for young people starting out, it's still about what's acceptable and what's not on how far you're prepared to go in pursuit of it. So I think it's still, you know, the idea is still there that you carve it in the shape you want it to be in, and you do your best to achieve that. Isn't it? Isn't that just what we do?
Michael: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's all about the little decisions you make along the way, like ‘bread first, ethics second’ maybe no, maybe ‘ethics first, bread second’. Maybe the bread will taste better if you... I mean, I was always difficult, you know, I went to ballet school for three or four years.
Like I was always in trouble. I couldn't... I'm just so self righteous, like, which is not a good thing, but it's kind of a gift because it just means that you can't stand being around bullshit. I mean, it doesn't mean you're not vulnerable or a victim to spewing out your own bullshit, but other people's bullshit is usually problematic.
I mean, you have to try and turn your weaknesses and your failings and your curses. If you want to be an artist, like you have a great opportunity to turn them into advantages. So like,
you know, suppose you try to use your temperaments... when your temperament - if you keep at something long enough, your temperament and your restrictions will start to make a kind of a world and a kind of a work, and then maybe people will want to watch it, and maybe people will pay you or give you money to put on shows. That's just how it has been for me anyway. But I would encourage all young people to try to always remember who they are first. You know, don't eat the bread too quickly. Maybe ask a few questions (about) where it came from before you swallow it.
Lou: Yeah. Okay, and so do you feel like this way of being, this sort of... you're slightly, I know you're kind of joking, but you’re also kind of rejecting a lot of what's on offer out there and you're certainly doing it on your own terms. Do you feel like that has... well, two questions actually; do you feel like that has prepared you for this period now? Because... okay, you can answer that question first. I'll come to the next one.
Michael: Yeah, well yeah. I mean when I came back from Sadler’s Wells, on the plane, like I was texting my partner, Rachel... I'm in a relationship with Rachel Poirier, who's a dancer and a gardener. And we're very close but I was texting her cause I, you know, I'm a Gail, I'm an Irishman, and we’re given to drama, and melodrama and exaggeration because we experience things quite high, you know, we're like... yeah, I guess we're a bit like Mediterranean people... but I was telling Rachel to buy a gun and get a few German Shepherds and change our few remaining euros into gold, you know?
Lou: And buy some toilet roll, surely?
Michael: No, no, that's what I wasn't, cause I have two acres here, I can go take a crap in the hedge and use the dock leaf to wipe my arse. So I suppose there’s the answer to your question, was that like I have lived in nature, for how long now... since 2006. So like, I wouldn't know how to... I mean, I'm not saying, I don't know... but I know how to grow food and I'm not afraid to wipe me arse with a dock leaf and, you know, I keep hens and I know my way around a cow if I had to milk one, you know, yeah.
I suppose, you know... and I don't eat... I eat really, really simply, I don't eat meat or hardly any of it. And I've no interest in money, really. I mean, obviously if I've none whatsoever, I might be going looking for some, but I suppose, yeah. I mean, the thing about dancers, I suppose, to connect it back to dancers, is that it came up like, you know, we were thinking about trying to improve things for dancers in Ireland and the conditions of dancers and choreographers.
And like, it dawned on me that dancers are brilliant people for a lockdown or for a pandemic because dancers live... they’re such amazing, like, I mean, I compare them to monks, but I know they're not like monks because monks are supposed to be holy and celibate and all that craic, but they never were either.
Let's face it, monks were generally drinking beer, chasing women... dancers are... you know, they can live on very little. And they're so disciplined and they manage their lives in such a kind of way where they live out of suitcases, they jump on planes. I know that's kind of a whole other thing now with travel, but like, dancers are cool, dancers are survivors.
Lou: Yeah. They have a clear relationship with themselves. They have to be quite content on their own because of the nature of the job-to job and the travel, but also yeah, their relationship with their body and their discipline. They have to just cut it alone. Don't they? So...
Michael: Yeah, they’re used to having no money. I mean, they're used to having very little money.
Lou: Yeah. Yeah. So are you secretly loving all of this then?
Michael: No, no, no. I've heard some great people, you know, giving interviews or talking about the pandemic or about lockdown and you know, they say ‘oh it’s a beautiful time’, you know, ‘this is a great time of renewal and rebirth and changing our perspective and the planet and there’s wolves on the golden gate bridge’, but no, I'm not secretly really enjoying it. I'm worried. I'm worried about what's coming and I try not to worry about it. I worry (about) what’s coming.
Lou: Yeah. I know. We'll talk about that in a bit, and I totally understand, but I found from my own experience that I'm remarkably capable of having a really good day and really enjoying, you know, feeling like I've learned, or I’ve achieved, or had a lovely time with my son.
And then I go, ‘Oh shit, actually. You know, none of this is true’. There's that, well, that's sad, but it's really surprised me that those things can exist so entirely simultaneously. But no, I totally hear what you're saying. So there you are in your lovely house in Ireland, watching the world change, I guess isn't it?
Yes, there is a pandemic spreading across the world, but also, there are a long overdue, hugely important changes taking place, conversations about inequality, and failures within society, and also within the arts, all of which has happening against the backdrop of the arts fighting for its own survival anyway. And I'm wondering how that experience is for you. Do you feel like you're gonna come out of this process, changed or charged in any way?
Michael: Yeah, definitely changed and charged. Absolutely. Good words. I feel changed and charged, profoundly changed. I mean, I'm pretty charged a lot of the time anyway, what I do, but, yeah like, a lot of the stuff that's going on is really like... it's powerful.
Like it's... you know, I suppose still so much to talk about it. It's so complex. But if I started with the idea, you know, like the statue in Bristol, that the guys pulled down, what I found interesting about that was, like how there is statues of people all over the Western ‘Civilized’ (in inverted commas) World, of people who were genocidal maniacs and murderers, psychopaths, sociopaths; we walk by them every day, you know, whether we do or we don't, but you know, metaphorically speaking, we accept certain forms of behaviour and power infrastructures and the way we're taught history, we accept it for days upon days upon years, upon years, and then suddenly something happens.
Yeah, George Floyd gets killed, I think, it would be fair to say it was the trigger. And then suddenly all the blinds start to fall down one after the other. And then we realise quite
quickly, like in the process of minutes, that the world, as we thought it was, even though we knew it was the way... even though we knew it wasn't the way we wanted it to be.
We suddenly see it really clearly now. And it's suddenly very, very wrong. It's extraordinary to me. And it's kind of, in some ways it's a great relief, you know, because that connects to what we were talking about first, the kind of the hypocrisy and the lies and the bullshit that people go on about saying one thing, and doing another.
But that's beginning to really... Okay, it's been... it feels like it's beginning to fall apart. It doesn't mean it will fall apart. It doesn't mean that those forces that have been holding it all in place for so long are going to let it go so easily. That's partly why I would be worried. It has definitely changed and it's given us, I think what's nice, is it's given a lot of people confidence and the language to express their rage and their discontent with things that were just simply wrong, but they couldn't find way or get the traction to express it. The same thing happened for women with the ‘MeToo’ movement, I think where suddenly they could say ‘No, that is just not on’.
And you couldn't say, ‘Oh, but come on’, you know, there was enough of a force behind it. Where you had to go, ‘No, that is not, actually you're right’. So that's all going on, isn't it at the moment in the world?
Lou: It is. And there's something about the enforced stillness, I think that's brilliantly, I guess, making us hear it all the louder, you know, ... it feels like that to me, you know, that the world is changing in so many ways and into the space where we filled it with all the other nonsense we were doing, this has all fallen and, yeah, we have to listen and we have to, you know, grow and change and reflect, I suppose.
Have you been able to let that land with you yet in terms of... I don't know, your work, the company, the future? Do you have ideas about how you... I don't just mean the Black Lives Matter movement, I mean, all of this thinking about equality and change, do you have ideas about how you want to go forward now you've got that?
Michael: Yeah, well, I mean, those things have always been really important to me. You know, they've always been part, like... I just don't get why anyone would treat anyone badly. Whether they're black, white, or a woman or an Irishman. Especially when the decision to treat them badly has already been made before they've met the person.
Like, I suppose... empathy is so important. How can you ask someone to do something when you wouldn't do it yourself? Or how can you treat someone in a way you wouldn't want to be treated yourself? Like, as I was talking about, you know, talking about making difficulties into positive things and limitations into strengths, like the only thing that I can bring to this is that because I'm Irish, I went to England in 1988 and in 1988, the IRA was blowing up England.
So, you know, I was a terrorist in the eyes of many people. And like, I was okay until I opened my mouth because I'm white, but as soon as people would hear my accent, things would change very quickly. And I could, you know, I could share many, many anecdotes about it and it's... it used to really annoy me, you know, people asking me if I was a terrorist or
asking... or telling me I was thick, you know, ‘You’re a thick Paddy’ or, ‘Fuck off, Paddy’, or ‘Fuck off back to Ireland’.
Or... what's the other one? Oh drunk, ‘Are you drunk?’ Or, you know, that kind of craic, and it really, really, really upsets me. It always upset me. It makes me very angry because I'm not thick, I'm highly intelligent and I don't drink, particularly much. I'm not a terrorist. I might be a cultural terrorist, but I'm not a terrorist.
So yeah, and because the dance world is so... it's so multi-racial and I like to think the potential for a kind of equality is so prevalent that these things are profoundly important to me, the idea that we are treated equally, fairly and lovingly and kindly whether, whoever you are. And I don't believe in power infrastructures based on title, or on a decision that, ‘I'm powerful’. You either are powerful or you're not. And if you need a statue or a title, the chances are that you're making up for some shortcoming. Anyway, I, you know, I like the idea of a powerful person who sits on the ground and talks gently to a child, not a statue. So, now I'm... my plan is to carry on.
Well, in theory, my plan is to carry on, but some things have changed. Practical things have changed that I have to consider. But I suppose what the events of the last four or five months have fuelled me, I'd say, to believe more in ideas that I'd already believed in that in fact... yeah; ‘You're right, Michael, carry on mate. You know, you're actually right.’
Lou: Yeah. Okay. Can we talk about that approach you have, I think in terms of how you make work, so you are... sitting on the floor, speaking gently, I think, introducing people to your home, to the area in which you live, and developing a kind of family, and linking back to the theme of time, like, I know it's really important to you that you have a long time...
I don't know what long means, to make a show so that you can grow together. You work together, live together, et cetera. Can you talk a bit about why that's so important to you and what you think that does to the work?
Michael: Hmm. Yeah. It's funny why it's important. I suppose I just don't, I just can see... I just can't see how you would make work any other way!
So, it's like what you're asking me to do, I suppose, is analyse what I do, but it's a bit like asking a dog why runs after a ball. It just does because it does, because it enjoys it and it's instinctual to it. Well, I know, yeah, I think you'd need a psychoanalyst or something to tell me, to tell you, why I do it.
Lou: So tell me how it works then. So this is my image; they all come with their backpacks on and they all arrive and they sleep in a dorm. No, maybe not that... but you, as you say, you live together, work together, is it as sort of gradual and flowing as that sounds? How do you start, and how do you make progress?
Michael: You start... oh God, how do you start? You start by finding, well, you start by... Okay. Yeah, well, I suppose, yeah, you start by finding a place for me to live, that inspires one. So where the forces of nature are still strong enough where they can move you. And then you invite a selected group of artists to come to the place that you have chosen, to
work with you. And then over a period of time through working together in a shared cooperative familial sort of a setup, you make some work and you hope that that work then will be imbued with, or shine, or emanate, some of that energy that attracted you to the place at the very beginning of the process, I suppose.
And then you would, you would bring that work around the world, or... maybe not anymore around the world, around Ireland. And you would love it if people were inspired by what they witnessed.
Lou: Okay. So the bit I want to get into is the little bit of the, ‘You make some work’, which makes it sound really easy. So you're all in a room and you've... I guess you quite often have your central theme or maybe a story from which you’re thinking... just give me an example of how you might start to create movement, and how you start to decide what's in and what's out?
Michael: Oh yeah. Well with movement like... With movement, for me, the relationship between music and movement is very strong. So I always work with musicians, live musicians...
Lou: And are they there the whole time?
Michael: As much as they can afford to be, you know, in an ideal scenario, they would be there the whole time, but you know what it's like in the big, bad world, people come and have to come and go because they have gigs and they need to make money.
And it can be a really expensive way of working, but they'd be there a lot. What happens is that if you put a dancer, a certain kind of a dancer who has certain... who share ways of perceiving the world, you know, and have things in common with say me, when you put them in a room and a really good musician, and that musician starts to play, the dancer just simply quite simply starts to dance.
If they're good, which they usually are, the dancing is great. And then it's just about going, ‘Remember that bit you did over there, James? Can you do that again? Can you do that again? Can you do it? Hey, Rachel, can you learn that from James?’ And then it's really, really a very natural process with no... what I've been working on for years was to try to find a way where there was no necessity for imposition.
So there was no necessity to raise the voice. There was no necessity to kind of talk about discipline or no necessity to even say... you know, never tell anyone they were late because they never would be late because they were all dying to jump out of bed to get back in the room, to get in contact with this amazing energy, cause I used to find imposition really just disappointing and I used to find it hard to like... why am I having to convince, you know, choreography, like painters don't have to convince the paint. Well, maybe they do with the kind of a force of the, you know... they're not talking to the paint, going, ‘Oh, come on. You know, you're not getting my vision’, they just get on with it.
Whereas when you're working with dancers, like it's such a cooperative collective endeavour, like it becomes really tedious if you're always the one having to go, ‘Hey guys,
my vision is great, we could do my vision’, it's much better when you simply create an environment where people feel really good and you start going at it and then things just start to appear.
And pretty much like everyone... I pick stuff that I can see, or the people love or I pick stuff that I can see other people love doing. And I listened to all those ‘ooh’s and ‘aah’s and ‘boo’s, and then that becomes the work. And I try - I really try very hard not to consider too deeply, what it will look like, you know, because I think the problem, the challenges of working the way I work, is that if dancers start to think you're objectifying the endeavour, and trying to control as a selected outcome in a careerist sort of a way, it's game over, you know, poets talk about the muse departing, well, the muse departs. So yeah, you have to commit to a certain rules of engagement and you have to stick to them because if you don't, then you’re becoming a charlatan aren't you, you're becoming the kind of a person you don't want to be.
Lou: So I totally hear you, but of course, as a dramaturg, who's paid to sit in a room where dancers dance and sometimes to articulate the thing that might be happening, so you're doing the thinking. I mean, you... somebody is making decisions, somebody's building this show and somebody saying, let's do that next, not that. And so... yeah, I mean, it's true. Yeah, you have to do the thinking.
Michael: I mean, I hear you. I probably do the most thinking allegedly, but no it's so... I mean, you probably find it hard to believe me, but it's so like... it's so collaborative. It's... the, you know, what I used to do and I probably will (still do) sometimes, what I used to do, was have a show in my head that I knew would get me over the line and then start and work the way I'm working, the work way I'm describing, but always knowing I have the show in the back of my head.
Now I don't have the show in the back of my head much anymore. I, you know, you have to, you know, you trust the people you have in the room. Like some of those people could make better shows than me, anyway, if there were given their resources or, if they had the stomach to fight for the resources, that's the other thing like you have to... you know, you have to be up for the fight to get the conditions, to give to the dancers and musicians so you can make this kind of work.
And that's a whole other thing, but you can't be going into an Arts Council meeting and going, ‘Hey guys. Let’s all sit on the floor’. I mean, maybe one day that would be lovely, but you know, there's a whole other aspect of what I do that isn't so gentle and kindness, you have to be a bit of a brawler.
Lou: And so, yeah, I recognise that, and you have to fight for the... you know, you're creating a sandpit, really, or a playground for you and the dancers so you have to fight to get that, to get them into that room, don't you and yeah, I'm sure that's a hell of a fight. One question I have, and I sort of know the answer, but so; when you're working like this and you are so sort of generous with how the show evolves and it introduces itself to you as time passes.
Does that mean that when it comes to the premiere, it's just like really relaxed? And, you just kind of, ‘Oh, look, time to share. That's nice’. Or is it not really like that? Is it stressful towards the end? Like, you know, it often is in the world I live in.
Michael: Well, it depends. No, no, it depends. Like, I think the word ‘generous’, like, you know, you described me as being generous, but I don't see it as that, like, I don't see I'm being generous.
It's like, the more you... there's all these sayings that people say, but quietly think, ‘this is a load of bollocks’, but actually ‘the more you give, the more you get’, is true. So generosity, as perceived by the capitalist marketeer is kind of a weakness. ‘Oh, he’s so generous’. You know, it's kind of like, you're quietly saying, ‘The guy’s a bit of a... (well, we say in Ireland), a bit of an eejit’, you know? But the more you give, the more you get, it's true. And with dancers, the more you trust, the more they trust you. I used to work with horses a bit. And there is a parallel actually, because of horses sense for a second, that you're a bit scared of them or nervous of them.
It's kind of nothing can happen. So, and then with the premiere question, you try, you... I used to make this mistake. So you’re up a mountain working on a piece of theatre, and then you bring it to Sadler’s Wells at the Barbican or to some, you know, massive festival and the shock is just too great.
It's just too great. So what I do now is I go through the gears. So first of all, we have a showing in the hall for 20 people. Then it may be another showing in the local bigger hall for 50 people. And then we try to maybe... then we do a little venue outside Dublin, and then we do the Dublin Theatre Festival.
And then we might go somewhere if I can arrange it, it's not always possible. And then we'd end up in Sadler’s Wells. And, I like to think I've learned to stay pretty calm over the years. but I can... I mean, some of my colleagues that sit beside me at premieres would say...
Lou: Not what I’ve heard!
Michael: I’m a nightmare. Like I had to give two people free tickets recently, who were sitting behind me at the premiere of Mám at the New Zealand festival, because I completely destroyed the show. The guy tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Mike’, you know, he says, ‘it's a great show’, I can't do the accent, ‘but you wrecked it for us’. I said, ‘I'm so sorry, I'll get you two tickets for tomorrow night’.
Cause like I'll be doing... no, why would you get nervous? I suppose you're nervous that this, this is thousand people that have gathered around in front of this thing, just won’t get the thing that felt so magical, even yesterday. You know what it's like in the theatre, one night, it can be magical, you do exactly the same sequence of movements to the same music with the same light it gives, and it just doesn't happen the next night, you know, it's something to do with forces far greater and more sophisticated than I can begin to comprehend. Yeah.
Lou: Okay. Let's talk about, place then, can we, and you know... we've already talked a lot about where the work gets made, I'm going to use the word Irishness, which I suspect is,
offensive, I don't know. How... what impact does it have, do you think, bringing people to your home and being amongst that landscape, what do you hope it gives them as people? And what do you hope it gives the work?
Michael: Hope. Yeah, I'm picking up all these words. I don't hope for anything and to be honest, like, hope... ‘hope leads to despair’.
Lou: But that's... but you do hope because you bring them there and you hope it's worth it and you hope it's amazing
Michael: No, no, I don’t, honestly, I know you don't believe me. I don't hope it will be worth it, it either will be or it won’t. And if it won’t, then there'll be tremendous learning in the process of discovering that this has been a total and utter waste of my time, but it never works out like that, because I'm smart enough now to bail, to jump, way before I’d be getting to the point of putting 20 people on planes from all over the world to come to the West Kerry Peninsula.
So... God, what comes into my head, to answer your question is that, I feel like I have a relationship with my ancestors and I feel beholden to them in some way to express energies and stories and share them with the world, I suppose, and that I need to do that here because the source of those stories and all that energy is here.
And by bringing the dancers and the musicians here, there’s a chance that they will connect with those energies themselves or, if not with those energies, with their own ancestral energies, and that does happen. I've seen it happen. And you know, I've worked with dancers who've then gone away and found out everything that could about their father's ancestry, their father, maybe who they didn't talk to or their mother who they didn't like.
And I think that's really cool. So if my hope would hope for anything I'd hope for that, because there's healing in that. And then, you know, when those kinds of... for me anyway, when I feel like I've told those stories well or shared that energy well, and it has been received and maybe understood or appreciated, I sleep really good that night.
Then I'm lighter, and then I'm a better father and I'm a better person. I'm going to go into town to buy my bread and my milk, I'm friendlier and then everything just goes better. And that's what I, if I wanted to use the word hope, I would hope for that to happen more.
Lou: Yeah, you put that really nicely. And it's about wanting to share that and to infuse the people in the work with that. But also the work to infuse the work and then share that with us, the audiences, I think. And yeah, you're right, whether that's Irishness or whether that's just a notion of the past or heritage or identity, I don't know, but I think I feel it.
Michael: I am Irish and I know I was born here, like, and I grew up here and there's a reason for that and there's a reason why I'm here, you know,.. yeah, go ahead. Sorry.
Lou: I was gonna say what I think... and I'm not Irish, but when I watched your work, I appreciate the Irishness, but I think I can also appreciate that the other thing, you know, like
you say, the heritage and the past and the belonging and the sort of the sort of ritual of it all, sort of the Irishness is just one example of that, you know.
Michael: Exactly. No, no, that's just the way that I connect. Yeah, sure. And the best way I can, yeah, explain what you're saying for me is like, we spent a lot of time in New Zealand developing the last piece because it was... we had a residency in Wellington and you know, some of the dancers I worked with were either from New Zealand or had worked in New Zealand, you know, like James O'Hara. And we got, we had Maori mentors, and the way they explained it, the way the Maori people explained it made absolutely perfect sense to me.
You know, it was exactly the same. They explained it better and with more confidence. It absolutely makes sense. So it doesn't matter where you're from. It's the same thing. It's just, I happen to be Irish and the thing that I'm connecting with manifests with these particular rocks and in this particular climate, and you know, and so forth and so on.
Lou: Yeah. I read with interest about the residency in New Zealand, and yeah, it's clear isn't it, it feels clear and it's a really interesting way of working and it also yeah, allows this notion of place to become present in the process and in the work as well, I guess. But something I wanted to ask you now, in this landscape, of course, for you to survive financially, as you said, you do have to tour, work has to be seen.
And you said before really clearly that that was never the goal. That's kind of a means to an end, really, and of course you want to reach audiences, but it's not the glamour of the global tour. But... and you need to do that to afford to work the way that you have described. So my question in this landscape is, are you worried then?
I mean, you kind of hinted that maybe you are, that these notions of time, this notion of place, and also scale, actually you work at quite large scale. I think there's 21, something people in Mám, and also the geographical reach that you've needed to have to be successful. Are you worried that they are privileges that belonged to yesterday? Do you... yeah, well, what's your thoughts on that?
Michael: Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking about you in this interview, just walking up the hill and I was thinking what... I was thinking to say to you that it could be, imagine this, like, it could be that I'll never get to work that way again, it could be, now it may not be, but just say it could be, what do we do then?
Could it be that, that was the last piece of work I'll ever make. Probably, I mean, it could be, but it's okay. I'm okay with that. It's kind of learning to be okay. It's the more the process of learning to be okay with certain scenarios, than the actual scenario, because if you're not worried about that, you're going to be worried about whether, you know, the mind will always find the thing to focus on.
That's what I found fascinating, was when I got back from Sadler’s Wells, when and everything had been cancelled, all the workshops, all the developmental stuff, our tour, we supposed to be on a national tour, Swan Lake performances. I remember thinking, I was thinking, I used to blame a lot of my behaviours like, you know, worry on the fact that I was an internationally working choreographer, but for the last five months I haven't been.
And yet I still have so much to say on varying matters, I found that fascinating then, to analyse that, going, you know, I think just the way we're wired, aren’t we, like, if we're not worried about whether we'll tour to Australia ever again, we'd be worried about whether we'd be able to, you know, whether the car will start in the morning before I go to the train station.
Like it's about getting, it's really good, this like, cause so yeah, maybe I'll never tour again or maybe I won't never be able to tour that way again or raise the finances to work the way I have. But if that's the case, that will be the case. And we will see what gives, you know, I've been planning for the last three years anyway, to stop traveling so much or at all, which seems completely mad when you looked at how we've been working.
Lou: You, or the work?
Michael: Definitely me and maybe the work because the climate crisis was already, you know, burgeoning and getting to the point like, where it was becoming kind of really difficult to get on a plane. So I found an old derelict factory down the end of the peninsula here. And I'm in the process of turning that into a centre, a place, a shrine, somewhere where you can go, and take yourself out of the urban field of consciousness and put yourself in the in the elemental field of consciousness.
Lou: A small place or a large place?
Michael: A large enough building. Yeah. It's an old furniture factory. Lou: Okay. So, you could rehearse there?
Michael: Yeah. Okay. So we're in the process. We're in the planning process now, it's just taking a long, long time, but we'll get there. So I wanted to focus on being, I wanted to focus even if I wasn't able to actually do it, but the idea of being in one place. My company is called Teaċ Daṁsa, and it means house... dance house, or house of dance.
So I liked the idea of this home, where people could come and rediscover some of these dynamics that gets so easily sold away in a commercial or in a product driven environment, and reconnect with those energies and then go back to where they came from. And, that seems to be, the pandemic has kind of accelerated that process, but people still need to travel to get here. So we'll just see, you know, accept it and be patient.
Lou: And do you think that you can make work, with, in, of, for, Ireland? I mean that everything you've described that matters to you, you can still do, even if it's... well with people who live in Ireland or bringing people ashore, Do you... can you shift your notion of success enough for that to be okay as a future then?
Michael: Yeah, cause I don't know what success means. Like that's another word, like, we should track all the words like generosity, success, career... I don't know, hope! Like what does success mean?
Lou: That’s what I’m asking, like, that the perception was okay, success equals touring enough, to being seen enough, being enjoyed enough by so many people that you can afford
to make your next show in the way you want to make it. And you know, the more generous version is that you have impact on people's lives and they appreciate the work you've made.
But that model does seem to be the past, but it still has to be worth it to you. So I guess the question is, yeah, is there a future that you can imagine that feels worth it in that scenario?
Michael: Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I couldn't write a PhD on what that future looks like just at the moment. But I mean, as well, like... how do I say this without you calling the men in the white coats... it's kind of enough for me to say, you know, like there are... I'm a believer Lou, you know, like what will be, will be and...
Lou: But you will make it be because you will write letters to dance funding bodies... Michael: No, I hear you, of course. Yeah. You see? Yeah. It's easy to counter that what I'm
saying, because like what I said earlier...
Lou: But I know what you mean, you’ll try...
Michael: You can choose to write 400 letters and get no response to 400 or you can choose the write one and get everything you wanted. Or you could never write a letter, and a fella turns up on your doorstep with a suitcase of money. Like it is extraordinary the way it all works. So I just have to give in a little bit, and I'm happy to give in. And it's kind of like, God, can I... it's hard to say this, but I mean it, like you're kind of at the service. I feel like you're at the service of the gift you were given.
So, you know, I'm at its service. So if it's required, things will manifest and the circumstances will manifest where I can continue to realize some version of success.
Lou: Okay. I'm just going to ask you a question, about your relationship with digital work, which I think I might guess how you feel about this, but first, at risk of making our dance and theatre staffed audiences cry, and maybe you, I'm going to quote you again, if I may, it's a long one, but it's nice.
So, you said you are ‘one click away from seeing just about anything, but there is one thing you can't access online. And that is a deep, energetic connection with another breathing, sensing, energetic, being, be it animal or human. This can only happen in the company of another living being in real space and in real time, and this is the realm of theatre. I'm in this game for one reason, and one reason only. So I can be present when these sorts of encounters unfold. To see the energy created amongst a group of performers, move from the stage and envelop the audience, to see that same energy travel back towards the stage, propelled by the intensification of the audiences, watching and listening, and then to see it magnified further and be sent back into the auditorium again’. I remember that feeling! So does that mean you're not going to be making a digital offering?
Michael: Yeah, I would, I'm interested in making a film, but not, you know, not with the idea of it being shown on a laptop, like it would be shown in a cinema.
Lou: Not filming live dance and showing it on a laptop?
Michael: No, no, but I don't... I mean, I'm not saying that to people should, or shouldn't do it. You know, my thing, my gift is all about the relationships. So, no I'm afraid not...
Lou: But a film? What type of film?
Michael: Well, you know... if you're making, you know, you're making a piece of theatre, you know the kind of dimensions of the space and the relationships and the energetic parameters that you're going to work with.
With a film, like there's different ones, but like, to make a piece of work with the idea that it will be shown maybe in a theatre, but on a screen, and I wanted to make a film of kind of a post, like you touched on it, like, a film that expresses the charge and the change that I've experienced in the last six months.
And I wanted the film to be shot on location, I know this sounds really boring, but it wouldn't be, I hope. But, I shot on location in Ireland, but not like a... we have, you know, the tourist board in Ireland is called ‘Bord Fáilte’, that means the welcome board. So not a Bord Fáilte version of Ireland. I love the idea, you know, that beauty the way we, well... sometimes the way we're expected to believe the beauty exists kind of in these tiny parameters, but actually beauty can exist in so many manifestations that are strange and otherly.
And I love the idea of showing a version of Ireland that isn't in inverted commas, ‘beautiful’, but is profoundly beautiful, through a dance film. Cause there are parts of Ireland that no one gets to see. And, you know, like when you look under someone's carpet or under their sofa, you learn much more about them than you do from the sofa itself. So yeah, something like that, I'd like to do maybe in the next 12 months.
Lou: And that might happen? Are you on it already?
Michael: I'm on it already. Yeah. And the other thing I want to do is a one-man show, I want to perform, but everyone, everyone I know, including my partner just tells me it's a really bad idea because I’m so bad! But I'm going to keep going for a while, a bit like my tree outside, persevere, you know, in spite of the wind and the rain.
Lou: Yeah. It's so bad. It's beautiful.
Michael: It's so bad, it's good. Yeah. I'm always telling dancers that, ‘Be really bad!’
Lou: And you're going to do that.
Michael: Yeah. I'm going to try and yeah, I want to do that too. Those are the two things I want to do.
Lou: Well, it's cheaper, isn't it?
Michael: It's definitely cheaper, but there's so many stories I want to tell. You know, and I'd like to try and tell them.
Lou: Fantastic. Okay, Michael, we're done. Our time is up. It's been such a pleasure talking. Thank you so much. I feel like I've spent the afternoon on an Irish hillside and it's been very lovely. So thank you for making the time.
Michael: Thanks very much for having me Lou, and see ya. See ya.
Transcript
Lou Cope talks to Michael Keegan-Dolan
21 July 2020
Lou: Hello, Michael Keegan-Dolan! Thank you very much for joining me. How are you doing?
Michael: I'm doing very well. Thank you. And thank you for having me on here.
Lou: It’s a great pleasure. I am presuming that you are up some lovely hill in Ireland. Is that correct?
Michael: That is correct. I am up a lovely hill... yeah, I don't know what makes a hill into a mountain or a mountain into a hill, but I'm halfway up a mountain. And I've been living here for three years... three years nearly to the day
Lou: Wow. I can see you're looking out of windows on both sides of you. What can you see?
Michael: On that side, I can see a huge green hill that has been reclaimed mostly by a farmer for a sheep. And on that side I see an enormous ash tree that has been trying to grow, I'd say, on that site for about 150 years, and not making a huge amount of progress. It's still there. It's kind of a monument to something... to endurance or something. It’s beautiful.
Lou: It keeps going. Is that a metaphor for something for you?
Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I kind of feel like that... interestingly this year, like the weather has been quite strange this year, in that we had two months of drought, the whole of April and May, which has kind of helped with the lockdown scenario, because drought also means sun, but there were two months of drought... so everything was a bit thrown here because traditionally it's not that dry in this part of the world, but it got very dry.And then we have this wind, it’s a local wind, called the ‘Scairbhín’. It's kind of the wind that marks the end of, kind of, the bad weather and the beginning of the good weather, but it hit quite late, and a lot of the leaves have come out and it just bleached all the leaves off a lot of the trees.So the trees around here this year, are kind of half-finished in that they won't ever fully express their glory this year because they got hit quite hard. And then it rained for the whole of June.Lou: Nice, that helps.
Michael: So now it's kind of fine again today, but it's been a strange year, not only in relation to pandemia, but also with weather.
Lou: Wow. It really does sound like a metaphor. It makes me feel funny. Okay so, has your experience of being there changed now that it's no longer a choice and that you’re enforced?
Michael: I suppose it has changed, but it was a choice. Yeah. That's the answer, I suppose, like... I want to be here, you know, to move here, actually was quite challenging and difficult and I had to turn my life upside down, in order to move to this part of the world.
So, no, I really wanted to be here and I want to be here and I'm here. I suppose more... it's more that... there has been a change of perception of here. Like even today, just before I arrived to sit down at the computer to talk to you, like I was on a, I was just visiting my brothers here.
I visited a beach. And the beaches, which are busy and they're busy with Irish people. Which would normally... they would be busy with Dutch and French and German and American. Well, the Americans generally don't get off the buses. They kind of pull up in the car park, take a few snaps and jump back on the bus to go to the next beach!
It's not their fault. It's just the way, you know, marketeer tourism works these days. But, it's interesting to see other people, Irish people spending time in these places. That kind of, they kind of maybe didn't spend as much time in over the last 10 to 15 years, because mostly they went to the sun... understandably they went looking for good weather.
So like, does it... yeah, there's a lot of shifts going on. I think it's hard to keep up actually, things are moving very fast.
Lou: Just when you feel like you understand it, it's all changed, hasn't it? Michael: Yeah, I don't feel, I never felt like...
Lou: You haven't reached that point. Okay. Fair enough. Okay. So what should you have been doing during this time then? What has it stopped you from achieving?
Michael: Oh, well achieving nothing. I have no interest in achieving anything really anymore. Well, we were... I was kind of lucky with the timing of it, in terms of a career trajectory, but I don't really have a career trajectory. I was writing... I was going to be... see, yeah, I was going to be... I was developing... it was development time for me now, it's time when the next thing was going to start to incubate.
Well, I have a very particular way of working, you know, so it's... I don't go around making pieces of work around Europe, or around the world, partially because I'm not very good at it. And partly because I don't get asked, but mostly because I don't want to. But yeah, so I kind of wait and then I write, and then I raise the money and then we produce, and then we tour.
So we just finished... well, actually my ‘coming into lockdown’ story was quite intense because we were on tour and we just got out of New Zealand before New Zealand locked down, which was a great... I mean, I kind of wish I could, if circumstances had been different, I might've stayed in New Zealand because that is a very beautiful and magnificent place.
But I had to go to London, because I had a premiere as part of a triple bill at Sadler’s Wells. It was a Nico Muhly evening. And I was working... the composer, Nico Muhly, and I was working with Sam Amidon, who had worked with Nico on a piece of music called ‘The Only Tune’. And I was working with the Britain Symphonia and eight dancers and Sam Amidon and Nico Muhly was there and the premiere was supposed to be Thursday, the 19th of March and on the Saturday... it was on the Sunday night, I lay in my bed in the DoubleTree Hotel in Islington and decided I was going home. Because things were really getting bad in Italy and I thought, I don't want to get the coronavirus in a DoubleTree Hotel. If I’m gonna get it, I want to get it at home. So I went home and Sadler’s closed up shop a few days after that.
Lou: So it didn't happen, the show didn't happen?
Michael: No, but it will happen. Because Alistair Spalding is that kind of a fella, you know, he’ll make it happen, but I mean, I was sad it didn't happen, but at the same time it would have been... I felt it would've been wrong to be part of something that required a thousand people to come into a space and share a theatrical event at that particular time based on what I knew, it just felt wrong.
But also it just, it was becoming a really sad time. Like, it felt not only because thousands of people were dying, but like, the way the English prime minister was responding initially, I found really confrontational. Like, I really got a sense that the markets were being protected first and foremost, and people were secondary to that.
And I found that really confronting and sad. So I was like back here in Ireland, yeah, things have been handled a little bit differently, so I was a bit more comfortable with those politics. So I was happy to get home.
Lou: It was a really difficult time, wasn't it? Because the unthinkable was happening, so you had to kind of get your head around that and then yes, you're turning to people like Boris Johnson for advice, and that's an unusual experience, for me anyway. So yeah, you had to do quite a lot of thinking quite quickly, didn't one. And you decided not to stay in your hotel in Islington.
I think maybe you made the right choice. Although yeah, New Zealand might've been nice. Okay. Well, you know, we look forward to that appearing one day, I guess maybe the spring or the summer, is it, do you think?
Michael: Yeah, well, I think I can’t speak for Alistair or any programmer, but the ones I have spoken to, like they've cancelled their 2020 programs. So they will probably deliver them in 2021. And then anything that should have been happening in 2021, will happen in 2022, so the whole thing has been kind of kicked down the road. That's really how it's affected me, maybe in a more challenging our problematic ways that our model; how we existed as a company has been... kind of the cycle has been broken entirely. And then a lot of the reserves we would have generated to give momentum to the next vision, our project...
Lou: Financial, you mean, or?
Michael: Yeah, our financial reserves are kind of being used up, and we’re not making any money cause we can't tour.
So I mean, I'd like to think that all stories have a happy ending. So I like to think that in a few years, all of this will somehow have been a very useful and transformative experience. But right now I'm just trying to keep my sense of humour about the whole thing.
Lou: Yeah. Okay, so there are a couple of themes that I wanted to talk to you about, and that seem to me to be at the heart of your practice, but also that seem resonant now, I think, and those themes are: time and place, and you can tell me if I'm wrong, and they’re not themes that are at the heart of your work.
So basically from what I hear, from what I read, from what I gathered about you, you seem to have quite a clear relationship with time, by that, I mean that you're very careful about how you manage it. As you say, you don't do things you don't want to do and you don't fake anything I think, and you believe...
Michael: Well you try not to... I mean, you know, the mind is so complex, so many layers, even with the best of the intentions in the world, you can still talk... you can still unconsciously talk absolute nonsense, even though you might think, you know... you look at our great leaders. I mean, they think they're great fellas.
They think that they're being truthful, but they’re just talking nonsense, are lying. So I like, yeah, I'm definitely in the pursuit of speaking from a place that's connected to something very real, but you know, it's not easy when you're hungry, even when you're hungry, that gets compromised. So yeah, I'm interested in that.
Lou: Yeah, the pursuit is good enough, I think. I think none of us manage it entirely, do we, but the pursuit of authenticity and yeah, not faking it and not, like you say, not following a model that doesn't suit you and that you don't believe in. And also the way that you allow time for ideas to appear in the space, and you allow time for shows to find their way to the light, I suppose.
I'm going to quote you if I may, ‘When something needs to happen, let it happen. If something needs to occur, it will occur. I approach my projects like this. If a dance or theatre work needs to come into existence, it will, and nothing will stop it’. It's good huh? Do you remember that?
Michael: Yeah, I remember writing that. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I mean, I think that sounds pretty good. But I mean, that's probably quite hard for someone who's starting out to hear, you know, it's like, you know, when you're younger, you think, you know, you're thinking differently about the world and you want to show the world what you know, or what you feel and that's good as well.
And then maybe you force things to make things happen, and maybe at the time that's good. But for me now, forcing just one work, it just causes you all sorts of problems. So I'd like to believe now that, well, you know the way we spend most of our life worried about raising finances so we can pay dancers and pay our electricity bills and so forth and so on.
But like, I like to... you know, and it's so easy to be absorbed, consumed by this pursuit of finding the resources to make the work you can make. I'd like to believe, you know, that you can easily become a victim in that scenario, you know, if you ever go to an arts conference where people are talking about the work, but very often the conversation quickly ends up in people talking about their difficulty in finding the resources or the opportunities, or the supports to make the work.
And we can end up sounding like victims, like artists, you know, ‘I can't get enough money for this and that’. And I don't want to be that like... so one way I've coped with that feeling of kind of helplessness is to kind of celebrate it and think it's actually a wonderful thing, because if it's going to be, it's going to be, so don't worry about it.
Like, I have a pretty tricky temperament for working in the theatre, or more for working in the theatre, in the reception, after the show, or at the parties, or at the award ceremonies. Like I don't do them particularly well. So I've done a really good job at wrecking my career, probably over the years of telling various people to go fuck off, you know, when I shouldn't have.
So in theory, I really shouldn't have any career, you know, I shouldn't be, you know... but for some reason I've been able to make a certain amount of work. And I like to think it's because I had to, and it was going to happen in spite of anything I did or said or worried about. Because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, like how can you, you know... we could think about what we do. It's counter (to) so many, strong ideologies, but somehow art, our work, our theatre, our dance, somehow it comes into existence. And I like to think that it does that because it has to, and it's got very little to do with me.
Lou: I totally understand what you're saying. And I also understand that you say it's hard for some people to hear, but you have earned the position you're in and you have made the choices you've made so that you don't have to, you know, just jump when someone tells you to jump. But that can be true at any point of a career, can’t it, you know, obviously, ‘bread first, ethics later’, I know that, but even for young people starting out, it's still about what's acceptable and what's not on how far you're prepared to go in pursuit of it. So I think it's still, you know, the idea is still there that you carve it in the shape you want it to be in, and you do your best to achieve that. Isn't it? Isn't that just what we do?
Michael: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's all about the little decisions you make along the way, like ‘bread first, ethics second’ maybe no, maybe ‘ethics first, bread second’. Maybe the bread will taste better if you... I mean, I was always difficult, you know, I went to ballet school for three or four years.
Like I was always in trouble. I couldn't... I'm just so self righteous, like, which is not a good thing, but it's kind of a gift because it just means that you can't stand being around bullshit. I mean, it doesn't mean you're not vulnerable or a victim to spewing out your own bullshit, but other people's bullshit is usually problematic.
I mean, you have to try and turn your weaknesses and your failings and your curses. If you want to be an artist, like you have a great opportunity to turn them into advantages. So like,
you know, suppose you try to use your temperaments... when your temperament - if you keep at something long enough, your temperament and your restrictions will start to make a kind of a world and a kind of a work, and then maybe people will want to watch it, and maybe people will pay you or give you money to put on shows. That's just how it has been for me anyway. But I would encourage all young people to try to always remember who they are first. You know, don't eat the bread too quickly. Maybe ask a few questions (about) where it came from before you swallow it.
Lou: Yeah. Okay, and so do you feel like this way of being, this sort of... you're slightly, I know you're kind of joking, but you’re also kind of rejecting a lot of what's on offer out there and you're certainly doing it on your own terms. Do you feel like that has... well, two questions actually; do you feel like that has prepared you for this period now? Because... okay, you can answer that question first. I'll come to the next one.
Michael: Yeah, well yeah. I mean when I came back from Sadler’s Wells, on the plane, like I was texting my partner, Rachel... I'm in a relationship with Rachel Poirier, who's a dancer and a gardener. And we're very close but I was texting her cause I, you know, I'm a Gail, I'm an Irishman, and we’re given to drama, and melodrama and exaggeration because we experience things quite high, you know, we're like... yeah, I guess we're a bit like Mediterranean people... but I was telling Rachel to buy a gun and get a few German Shepherds and change our few remaining euros into gold, you know?
Lou: And buy some toilet roll, surely?
Michael: No, no, that's what I wasn't, cause I have two acres here, I can go take a crap in the hedge and use the dock leaf to wipe my arse. So I suppose there’s the answer to your question, was that like I have lived in nature, for how long now... since 2006. So like, I wouldn't know how to... I mean, I'm not saying, I don't know... but I know how to grow food and I'm not afraid to wipe me arse with a dock leaf and, you know, I keep hens and I know my way around a cow if I had to milk one, you know, yeah.
I suppose, you know... and I don't eat... I eat really, really simply, I don't eat meat or hardly any of it. And I've no interest in money, really. I mean, obviously if I've none whatsoever, I might be going looking for some, but I suppose, yeah. I mean, the thing about dancers, I suppose, to connect it back to dancers, is that it came up like, you know, we were thinking about trying to improve things for dancers in Ireland and the conditions of dancers and choreographers.
And like, it dawned on me that dancers are brilliant people for a lockdown or for a pandemic because dancers live... they’re such amazing, like, I mean, I compare them to monks, but I know they're not like monks because monks are supposed to be holy and celibate and all that craic, but they never were either.
Let's face it, monks were generally drinking beer, chasing women... dancers are... you know, they can live on very little. And they're so disciplined and they manage their lives in such a kind of way where they live out of suitcases, they jump on planes. I know that's kind of a whole other thing now with travel, but like, dancers are cool, dancers are survivors.
Lou: Yeah. They have a clear relationship with themselves. They have to be quite content on their own because of the nature of the job-to job and the travel, but also yeah, their relationship with their body and their discipline. They have to just cut it alone. Don't they? So...
Michael: Yeah, they’re used to having no money. I mean, they're used to having very little money.
Lou: Yeah. Yeah. So are you secretly loving all of this then?
Michael: No, no, no. I've heard some great people, you know, giving interviews or talking about the pandemic or about lockdown and you know, they say ‘oh it’s a beautiful time’, you know, ‘this is a great time of renewal and rebirth and changing our perspective and the planet and there’s wolves on the golden gate bridge’, but no, I'm not secretly really enjoying it. I'm worried. I'm worried about what's coming and I try not to worry about it. I worry (about) what’s coming.
Lou: Yeah. I know. We'll talk about that in a bit, and I totally understand, but I found from my own experience that I'm remarkably capable of having a really good day and really enjoying, you know, feeling like I've learned, or I’ve achieved, or had a lovely time with my son.
And then I go, ‘Oh shit, actually. You know, none of this is true’. There's that, well, that's sad, but it's really surprised me that those things can exist so entirely simultaneously. But no, I totally hear what you're saying. So there you are in your lovely house in Ireland, watching the world change, I guess isn't it?
Yes, there is a pandemic spreading across the world, but also, there are a long overdue, hugely important changes taking place, conversations about inequality, and failures within society, and also within the arts, all of which has happening against the backdrop of the arts fighting for its own survival anyway. And I'm wondering how that experience is for you. Do you feel like you're gonna come out of this process, changed or charged in any way?
Michael: Yeah, definitely changed and charged. Absolutely. Good words. I feel changed and charged, profoundly changed. I mean, I'm pretty charged a lot of the time anyway, what I do, but, yeah like, a lot of the stuff that's going on is really like... it's powerful.
Like it's... you know, I suppose still so much to talk about it. It's so complex. But if I started with the idea, you know, like the statue in Bristol, that the guys pulled down, what I found interesting about that was, like how there is statues of people all over the Western ‘Civilized’ (in inverted commas) World, of people who were genocidal maniacs and murderers, psychopaths, sociopaths; we walk by them every day, you know, whether we do or we don't, but you know, metaphorically speaking, we accept certain forms of behaviour and power infrastructures and the way we're taught history, we accept it for days upon days upon years, upon years, and then suddenly something happens.
Yeah, George Floyd gets killed, I think, it would be fair to say it was the trigger. And then suddenly all the blinds start to fall down one after the other. And then we realise quite
quickly, like in the process of minutes, that the world, as we thought it was, even though we knew it was the way... even though we knew it wasn't the way we wanted it to be.
We suddenly see it really clearly now. And it's suddenly very, very wrong. It's extraordinary to me. And it's kind of, in some ways it's a great relief, you know, because that connects to what we were talking about first, the kind of the hypocrisy and the lies and the bullshit that people go on about saying one thing, and doing another.
But that's beginning to really... Okay, it's been... it feels like it's beginning to fall apart. It doesn't mean it will fall apart. It doesn't mean that those forces that have been holding it all in place for so long are going to let it go so easily. That's partly why I would be worried. It has definitely changed and it's given us, I think what's nice, is it's given a lot of people confidence and the language to express their rage and their discontent with things that were just simply wrong, but they couldn't find way or get the traction to express it. The same thing happened for women with the ‘MeToo’ movement, I think where suddenly they could say ‘No, that is just not on’.
And you couldn't say, ‘Oh, but come on’, you know, there was enough of a force behind it. Where you had to go, ‘No, that is not, actually you're right’. So that's all going on, isn't it at the moment in the world?
Lou: It is. And there's something about the enforced stillness, I think that's brilliantly, I guess, making us hear it all the louder, you know, ... it feels like that to me, you know, that the world is changing in so many ways and into the space where we filled it with all the other nonsense we were doing, this has all fallen and, yeah, we have to listen and we have to, you know, grow and change and reflect, I suppose.
Have you been able to let that land with you yet in terms of... I don't know, your work, the company, the future? Do you have ideas about how you... I don't just mean the Black Lives Matter movement, I mean, all of this thinking about equality and change, do you have ideas about how you want to go forward now you've got that?
Michael: Yeah, well, I mean, those things have always been really important to me. You know, they've always been part, like... I just don't get why anyone would treat anyone badly. Whether they're black, white, or a woman or an Irishman. Especially when the decision to treat them badly has already been made before they've met the person.
Like, I suppose... empathy is so important. How can you ask someone to do something when you wouldn't do it yourself? Or how can you treat someone in a way you wouldn't want to be treated yourself? Like, as I was talking about, you know, talking about making difficulties into positive things and limitations into strengths, like the only thing that I can bring to this is that because I'm Irish, I went to England in 1988 and in 1988, the IRA was blowing up England.
So, you know, I was a terrorist in the eyes of many people. And like, I was okay until I opened my mouth because I'm white, but as soon as people would hear my accent, things would change very quickly. And I could, you know, I could share many, many anecdotes about it and it's... it used to really annoy me, you know, people asking me if I was a terrorist or
asking... or telling me I was thick, you know, ‘You’re a thick Paddy’ or, ‘Fuck off, Paddy’, or ‘Fuck off back to Ireland’.
Or... what's the other one? Oh drunk, ‘Are you drunk?’ Or, you know, that kind of craic, and it really, really, really upsets me. It always upset me. It makes me very angry because I'm not thick, I'm highly intelligent and I don't drink, particularly much. I'm not a terrorist. I might be a cultural terrorist, but I'm not a terrorist.
So yeah, and because the dance world is so... it's so multi-racial and I like to think the potential for a kind of equality is so prevalent that these things are profoundly important to me, the idea that we are treated equally, fairly and lovingly and kindly whether, whoever you are. And I don't believe in power infrastructures based on title, or on a decision that, ‘I'm powerful’. You either are powerful or you're not. And if you need a statue or a title, the chances are that you're making up for some shortcoming. Anyway, I, you know, I like the idea of a powerful person who sits on the ground and talks gently to a child, not a statue. So, now I'm... my plan is to carry on.
Well, in theory, my plan is to carry on, but some things have changed. Practical things have changed that I have to consider. But I suppose what the events of the last four or five months have fuelled me, I'd say, to believe more in ideas that I'd already believed in that in fact... yeah; ‘You're right, Michael, carry on mate. You know, you're actually right.’
Lou: Yeah. Okay. Can we talk about that approach you have, I think in terms of how you make work, so you are... sitting on the floor, speaking gently, I think, introducing people to your home, to the area in which you live, and developing a kind of family, and linking back to the theme of time, like, I know it's really important to you that you have a long time...
I don't know what long means, to make a show so that you can grow together. You work together, live together, et cetera. Can you talk a bit about why that's so important to you and what you think that does to the work?
Michael: Hmm. Yeah. It's funny why it's important. I suppose I just don't, I just can see... I just can't see how you would make work any other way!
So, it's like what you're asking me to do, I suppose, is analyse what I do, but it's a bit like asking a dog why runs after a ball. It just does because it does, because it enjoys it and it's instinctual to it. Well, I know, yeah, I think you'd need a psychoanalyst or something to tell me, to tell you, why I do it.
Lou: So tell me how it works then. So this is my image; they all come with their backpacks on and they all arrive and they sleep in a dorm. No, maybe not that... but you, as you say, you live together, work together, is it as sort of gradual and flowing as that sounds? How do you start, and how do you make progress?
Michael: You start... oh God, how do you start? You start by finding, well, you start by... Okay. Yeah, well, I suppose, yeah, you start by finding a place for me to live, that inspires one. So where the forces of nature are still strong enough where they can move you. And then you invite a selected group of artists to come to the place that you have chosen, to
work with you. And then over a period of time through working together in a shared cooperative familial sort of a setup, you make some work and you hope that that work then will be imbued with, or shine, or emanate, some of that energy that attracted you to the place at the very beginning of the process, I suppose.
And then you would, you would bring that work around the world, or... maybe not anymore around the world, around Ireland. And you would love it if people were inspired by what they witnessed.
Lou: Okay. So the bit I want to get into is the little bit of the, ‘You make some work’, which makes it sound really easy. So you're all in a room and you've... I guess you quite often have your central theme or maybe a story from which you’re thinking... just give me an example of how you might start to create movement, and how you start to decide what's in and what's out?
Michael: Oh yeah. Well with movement like... With movement, for me, the relationship between music and movement is very strong. So I always work with musicians, live musicians...
Lou: And are they there the whole time?
Michael: As much as they can afford to be, you know, in an ideal scenario, they would be there the whole time, but you know what it's like in the big, bad world, people come and have to come and go because they have gigs and they need to make money.
And it can be a really expensive way of working, but they'd be there a lot. What happens is that if you put a dancer, a certain kind of a dancer who has certain... who share ways of perceiving the world, you know, and have things in common with say me, when you put them in a room and a really good musician, and that musician starts to play, the dancer just simply quite simply starts to dance.
If they're good, which they usually are, the dancing is great. And then it's just about going, ‘Remember that bit you did over there, James? Can you do that again? Can you do that again? Can you do it? Hey, Rachel, can you learn that from James?’ And then it's really, really a very natural process with no... what I've been working on for years was to try to find a way where there was no necessity for imposition.
So there was no necessity to raise the voice. There was no necessity to kind of talk about discipline or no necessity to even say... you know, never tell anyone they were late because they never would be late because they were all dying to jump out of bed to get back in the room, to get in contact with this amazing energy, cause I used to find imposition really just disappointing and I used to find it hard to like... why am I having to convince, you know, choreography, like painters don't have to convince the paint. Well, maybe they do with the kind of a force of the, you know... they're not talking to the paint, going, ‘Oh, come on. You know, you're not getting my vision’, they just get on with it.
Whereas when you're working with dancers, like it's such a cooperative collective endeavour, like it becomes really tedious if you're always the one having to go, ‘Hey guys,
my vision is great, we could do my vision’, it's much better when you simply create an environment where people feel really good and you start going at it and then things just start to appear.
And pretty much like everyone... I pick stuff that I can see, or the people love or I pick stuff that I can see other people love doing. And I listened to all those ‘ooh’s and ‘aah’s and ‘boo’s, and then that becomes the work. And I try - I really try very hard not to consider too deeply, what it will look like, you know, because I think the problem, the challenges of working the way I work, is that if dancers start to think you're objectifying the endeavour, and trying to control as a selected outcome in a careerist sort of a way, it's game over, you know, poets talk about the muse departing, well, the muse departs. So yeah, you have to commit to a certain rules of engagement and you have to stick to them because if you don't, then you’re becoming a charlatan aren't you, you're becoming the kind of a person you don't want to be.
Lou: So I totally hear you, but of course, as a dramaturg, who's paid to sit in a room where dancers dance and sometimes to articulate the thing that might be happening, so you're doing the thinking. I mean, you... somebody is making decisions, somebody's building this show and somebody saying, let's do that next, not that. And so... yeah, I mean, it's true. Yeah, you have to do the thinking.
Michael: I mean, I hear you. I probably do the most thinking allegedly, but no it's so... I mean, you probably find it hard to believe me, but it's so like... it's so collaborative. It's... the, you know, what I used to do and I probably will (still do) sometimes, what I used to do, was have a show in my head that I knew would get me over the line and then start and work the way I'm working, the work way I'm describing, but always knowing I have the show in the back of my head.
Now I don't have the show in the back of my head much anymore. I, you know, you have to, you know, you trust the people you have in the room. Like some of those people could make better shows than me, anyway, if there were given their resources or, if they had the stomach to fight for the resources, that's the other thing like you have to... you know, you have to be up for the fight to get the conditions, to give to the dancers and musicians so you can make this kind of work.
And that's a whole other thing, but you can't be going into an Arts Council meeting and going, ‘Hey guys. Let’s all sit on the floor’. I mean, maybe one day that would be lovely, but you know, there's a whole other aspect of what I do that isn't so gentle and kindness, you have to be a bit of a brawler.
Lou: And so, yeah, I recognise that, and you have to fight for the... you know, you're creating a sandpit, really, or a playground for you and the dancers so you have to fight to get that, to get them into that room, don't you and yeah, I'm sure that's a hell of a fight. One question I have, and I sort of know the answer, but so; when you're working like this and you are so sort of generous with how the show evolves and it introduces itself to you as time passes.
Does that mean that when it comes to the premiere, it's just like really relaxed? And, you just kind of, ‘Oh, look, time to share. That's nice’. Or is it not really like that? Is it stressful towards the end? Like, you know, it often is in the world I live in.
Michael: Well, it depends. No, no, it depends. Like, I think the word ‘generous’, like, you know, you described me as being generous, but I don't see it as that, like, I don't see I'm being generous.
It's like, the more you... there's all these sayings that people say, but quietly think, ‘this is a load of bollocks’, but actually ‘the more you give, the more you get’, is true. So generosity, as perceived by the capitalist marketeer is kind of a weakness. ‘Oh, he’s so generous’. You know, it's kind of like, you're quietly saying, ‘The guy’s a bit of a... (well, we say in Ireland), a bit of an eejit’, you know? But the more you give, the more you get, it's true. And with dancers, the more you trust, the more they trust you. I used to work with horses a bit. And there is a parallel actually, because of horses sense for a second, that you're a bit scared of them or nervous of them.
It's kind of nothing can happen. So, and then with the premiere question, you try, you... I used to make this mistake. So you’re up a mountain working on a piece of theatre, and then you bring it to Sadler’s Wells at the Barbican or to some, you know, massive festival and the shock is just too great.
It's just too great. So what I do now is I go through the gears. So first of all, we have a showing in the hall for 20 people. Then it may be another showing in the local bigger hall for 50 people. And then we try to maybe... then we do a little venue outside Dublin, and then we do the Dublin Theatre Festival.
And then we might go somewhere if I can arrange it, it's not always possible. And then we'd end up in Sadler’s Wells. And, I like to think I've learned to stay pretty calm over the years. but I can... I mean, some of my colleagues that sit beside me at premieres would say...
Lou: Not what I’ve heard!
Michael: I’m a nightmare. Like I had to give two people free tickets recently, who were sitting behind me at the premiere of Mám at the New Zealand festival, because I completely destroyed the show. The guy tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Mike’, you know, he says, ‘it's a great show’, I can't do the accent, ‘but you wrecked it for us’. I said, ‘I'm so sorry, I'll get you two tickets for tomorrow night’.
Cause like I'll be doing... no, why would you get nervous? I suppose you're nervous that this, this is thousand people that have gathered around in front of this thing, just won’t get the thing that felt so magical, even yesterday. You know what it's like in the theatre, one night, it can be magical, you do exactly the same sequence of movements to the same music with the same light it gives, and it just doesn't happen the next night, you know, it's something to do with forces far greater and more sophisticated than I can begin to comprehend. Yeah.
Lou: Okay. Let's talk about, place then, can we, and you know... we've already talked a lot about where the work gets made, I'm going to use the word Irishness, which I suspect is,
offensive, I don't know. How... what impact does it have, do you think, bringing people to your home and being amongst that landscape, what do you hope it gives them as people? And what do you hope it gives the work?
Michael: Hope. Yeah, I'm picking up all these words. I don't hope for anything and to be honest, like, hope... ‘hope leads to despair’.
Lou: But that's... but you do hope because you bring them there and you hope it's worth it and you hope it's amazing
Michael: No, no, I don’t, honestly, I know you don't believe me. I don't hope it will be worth it, it either will be or it won’t. And if it won’t, then there'll be tremendous learning in the process of discovering that this has been a total and utter waste of my time, but it never works out like that, because I'm smart enough now to bail, to jump, way before I’d be getting to the point of putting 20 people on planes from all over the world to come to the West Kerry Peninsula.
So... God, what comes into my head, to answer your question is that, I feel like I have a relationship with my ancestors and I feel beholden to them in some way to express energies and stories and share them with the world, I suppose, and that I need to do that here because the source of those stories and all that energy is here.
And by bringing the dancers and the musicians here, there’s a chance that they will connect with those energies themselves or, if not with those energies, with their own ancestral energies, and that does happen. I've seen it happen. And you know, I've worked with dancers who've then gone away and found out everything that could about their father's ancestry, their father, maybe who they didn't talk to or their mother who they didn't like.
And I think that's really cool. So if my hope would hope for anything I'd hope for that, because there's healing in that. And then, you know, when those kinds of... for me anyway, when I feel like I've told those stories well or shared that energy well, and it has been received and maybe understood or appreciated, I sleep really good that night.
Then I'm lighter, and then I'm a better father and I'm a better person. I'm going to go into town to buy my bread and my milk, I'm friendlier and then everything just goes better. And that's what I, if I wanted to use the word hope, I would hope for that to happen more.
Lou: Yeah, you put that really nicely. And it's about wanting to share that and to infuse the people in the work with that. But also the work to infuse the work and then share that with us, the audiences, I think. And yeah, you're right, whether that's Irishness or whether that's just a notion of the past or heritage or identity, I don't know, but I think I feel it.
Michael: I am Irish and I know I was born here, like, and I grew up here and there's a reason for that and there's a reason why I'm here, you know,.. yeah, go ahead. Sorry.
Lou: I was gonna say what I think... and I'm not Irish, but when I watched your work, I appreciate the Irishness, but I think I can also appreciate that the other thing, you know, like
you say, the heritage and the past and the belonging and the sort of the sort of ritual of it all, sort of the Irishness is just one example of that, you know.
Michael: Exactly. No, no, that's just the way that I connect. Yeah, sure. And the best way I can, yeah, explain what you're saying for me is like, we spent a lot of time in New Zealand developing the last piece because it was... we had a residency in Wellington and you know, some of the dancers I worked with were either from New Zealand or had worked in New Zealand, you know, like James O'Hara. And we got, we had Maori mentors, and the way they explained it, the way the Maori people explained it made absolutely perfect sense to me.
You know, it was exactly the same. They explained it better and with more confidence. It absolutely makes sense. So it doesn't matter where you're from. It's the same thing. It's just, I happen to be Irish and the thing that I'm connecting with manifests with these particular rocks and in this particular climate, and you know, and so forth and so on.
Lou: Yeah. I read with interest about the residency in New Zealand, and yeah, it's clear isn't it, it feels clear and it's a really interesting way of working and it also yeah, allows this notion of place to become present in the process and in the work as well, I guess. But something I wanted to ask you now, in this landscape, of course, for you to survive financially, as you said, you do have to tour, work has to be seen.
And you said before really clearly that that was never the goal. That's kind of a means to an end, really, and of course you want to reach audiences, but it's not the glamour of the global tour. But... and you need to do that to afford to work the way that you have described. So my question in this landscape is, are you worried then?
I mean, you kind of hinted that maybe you are, that these notions of time, this notion of place, and also scale, actually you work at quite large scale. I think there's 21, something people in Mám, and also the geographical reach that you've needed to have to be successful. Are you worried that they are privileges that belonged to yesterday? Do you... yeah, well, what's your thoughts on that?
Michael: Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking about you in this interview, just walking up the hill and I was thinking what... I was thinking to say to you that it could be, imagine this, like, it could be that I'll never get to work that way again, it could be, now it may not be, but just say it could be, what do we do then?
Could it be that, that was the last piece of work I'll ever make. Probably, I mean, it could be, but it's okay. I'm okay with that. It's kind of learning to be okay. It's the more the process of learning to be okay with certain scenarios, than the actual scenario, because if you're not worried about that, you're going to be worried about whether, you know, the mind will always find the thing to focus on.
That's what I found fascinating, was when I got back from Sadler’s Wells, when and everything had been cancelled, all the workshops, all the developmental stuff, our tour, we supposed to be on a national tour, Swan Lake performances. I remember thinking, I was thinking, I used to blame a lot of my behaviours like, you know, worry on the fact that I was an internationally working choreographer, but for the last five months I haven't been.
And yet I still have so much to say on varying matters, I found that fascinating then, to analyse that, going, you know, I think just the way we're wired, aren’t we, like, if we're not worried about whether we'll tour to Australia ever again, we'd be worried about whether we'd be able to, you know, whether the car will start in the morning before I go to the train station.
Like it's about getting, it's really good, this like, cause so yeah, maybe I'll never tour again or maybe I won't never be able to tour that way again or raise the finances to work the way I have. But if that's the case, that will be the case. And we will see what gives, you know, I've been planning for the last three years anyway, to stop traveling so much or at all, which seems completely mad when you looked at how we've been working.
Lou: You, or the work?
Michael: Definitely me and maybe the work because the climate crisis was already, you know, burgeoning and getting to the point like, where it was becoming kind of really difficult to get on a plane. So I found an old derelict factory down the end of the peninsula here. And I'm in the process of turning that into a centre, a place, a shrine, somewhere where you can go, and take yourself out of the urban field of consciousness and put yourself in the in the elemental field of consciousness.
Lou: A small place or a large place?
Michael: A large enough building. Yeah. It's an old furniture factory. Lou: Okay. So, you could rehearse there?
Michael: Yeah. Okay. So we're in the process. We're in the planning process now, it's just taking a long, long time, but we'll get there. So I wanted to focus on being, I wanted to focus even if I wasn't able to actually do it, but the idea of being in one place. My company is called Teaċ Daṁsa, and it means house... dance house, or house of dance.
So I liked the idea of this home, where people could come and rediscover some of these dynamics that gets so easily sold away in a commercial or in a product driven environment, and reconnect with those energies and then go back to where they came from. And, that seems to be, the pandemic has kind of accelerated that process, but people still need to travel to get here. So we'll just see, you know, accept it and be patient.
Lou: And do you think that you can make work, with, in, of, for, Ireland? I mean that everything you've described that matters to you, you can still do, even if it's... well with people who live in Ireland or bringing people ashore, Do you... can you shift your notion of success enough for that to be okay as a future then?
Michael: Yeah, cause I don't know what success means. Like that's another word, like, we should track all the words like generosity, success, career... I don't know, hope! Like what does success mean?
Lou: That’s what I’m asking, like, that the perception was okay, success equals touring enough, to being seen enough, being enjoyed enough by so many people that you can afford
to make your next show in the way you want to make it. And you know, the more generous version is that you have impact on people's lives and they appreciate the work you've made.
But that model does seem to be the past, but it still has to be worth it to you. So I guess the question is, yeah, is there a future that you can imagine that feels worth it in that scenario?
Michael: Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I couldn't write a PhD on what that future looks like just at the moment. But I mean, as well, like... how do I say this without you calling the men in the white coats... it's kind of enough for me to say, you know, like there are... I'm a believer Lou, you know, like what will be, will be and...
Lou: But you will make it be because you will write letters to dance funding bodies... Michael: No, I hear you, of course. Yeah. You see? Yeah. It's easy to counter that what I'm
saying, because like what I said earlier...
Lou: But I know what you mean, you’ll try...
Michael: You can choose to write 400 letters and get no response to 400 or you can choose the write one and get everything you wanted. Or you could never write a letter, and a fella turns up on your doorstep with a suitcase of money. Like it is extraordinary the way it all works. So I just have to give in a little bit, and I'm happy to give in. And it's kind of like, God, can I... it's hard to say this, but I mean it, like you're kind of at the service. I feel like you're at the service of the gift you were given.
So, you know, I'm at its service. So if it's required, things will manifest and the circumstances will manifest where I can continue to realize some version of success.
Lou: Okay. I'm just going to ask you a question, about your relationship with digital work, which I think I might guess how you feel about this, but first, at risk of making our dance and theatre staffed audiences cry, and maybe you, I'm going to quote you again, if I may, it's a long one, but it's nice.
So, you said you are ‘one click away from seeing just about anything, but there is one thing you can't access online. And that is a deep, energetic connection with another breathing, sensing, energetic, being, be it animal or human. This can only happen in the company of another living being in real space and in real time, and this is the realm of theatre. I'm in this game for one reason, and one reason only. So I can be present when these sorts of encounters unfold. To see the energy created amongst a group of performers, move from the stage and envelop the audience, to see that same energy travel back towards the stage, propelled by the intensification of the audiences, watching and listening, and then to see it magnified further and be sent back into the auditorium again’. I remember that feeling! So does that mean you're not going to be making a digital offering?
Michael: Yeah, I would, I'm interested in making a film, but not, you know, not with the idea of it being shown on a laptop, like it would be shown in a cinema.
Lou: Not filming live dance and showing it on a laptop?
Michael: No, no, but I don't... I mean, I'm not saying that to people should, or shouldn't do it. You know, my thing, my gift is all about the relationships. So, no I'm afraid not...
Lou: But a film? What type of film?
Michael: Well, you know... if you're making, you know, you're making a piece of theatre, you know the kind of dimensions of the space and the relationships and the energetic parameters that you're going to work with.
With a film, like there's different ones, but like, to make a piece of work with the idea that it will be shown maybe in a theatre, but on a screen, and I wanted to make a film of kind of a post, like you touched on it, like, a film that expresses the charge and the change that I've experienced in the last six months.
And I wanted the film to be shot on location, I know this sounds really boring, but it wouldn't be, I hope. But, I shot on location in Ireland, but not like a... we have, you know, the tourist board in Ireland is called ‘Bord Fáilte’, that means the welcome board. So not a Bord Fáilte version of Ireland. I love the idea, you know, that beauty the way we, well... sometimes the way we're expected to believe the beauty exists kind of in these tiny parameters, but actually beauty can exist in so many manifestations that are strange and otherly.
And I love the idea of showing a version of Ireland that isn't in inverted commas, ‘beautiful’, but is profoundly beautiful, through a dance film. Cause there are parts of Ireland that no one gets to see. And, you know, like when you look under someone's carpet or under their sofa, you learn much more about them than you do from the sofa itself. So yeah, something like that, I'd like to do maybe in the next 12 months.
Lou: And that might happen? Are you on it already?
Michael: I'm on it already. Yeah. And the other thing I want to do is a one-man show, I want to perform, but everyone, everyone I know, including my partner just tells me it's a really bad idea because I’m so bad! But I'm going to keep going for a while, a bit like my tree outside, persevere, you know, in spite of the wind and the rain.
Lou: Yeah. It's so bad. It's beautiful.
Michael: It's so bad, it's good. Yeah. I'm always telling dancers that, ‘Be really bad!’
Lou: And you're going to do that.
Michael: Yeah. I'm going to try and yeah, I want to do that too. Those are the two things I want to do.
Lou: Well, it's cheaper, isn't it?
Michael: It's definitely cheaper, but there's so many stories I want to tell. You know, and I'd like to try and tell them.
Lou: Fantastic. Okay, Michael, we're done. Our time is up. It's been such a pleasure talking. Thank you so much. I feel like I've spent the afternoon on an Irish hillside and it's been very lovely. So thank you for making the time.
Michael: Thanks very much for having me Lou, and see ya. See ya.
