Review: Return to Absence

Return to Absence

Dublin Dance Festival, Project Arts Centre

****

The final words of Beckett's The Unnamable is the frequently quoted ''You must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on.'' It sums up the stoicism underpinning much of the action in Arcane Collective's Beckett-inspired Return To Absence, choreographed by Morleigh Steinberg. Inspired by the writer's trilogy of novels – Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnamable – the dance draws on his rich imagery, pure language and mordant comedy to construct a physical and emotional landscape that somehow finds hope within despair.

Like Cold Dream Colour, the company's homage to artist Louis le Broquy that revealed the complex layers beneath the surface of his paintings, Return to Absence delves deep below the narrative. There are some identifiable moments, like the sucking stones sequence from Molloy, but more attention is paid to physicalising the characters' internal struggle.

Oguri, Boaz Barkan and Andrés Corchero give sustained performances, with a movement vocabulary that at times drew on Butoh. In these moments, their slowly moving gnarled limbs embody the twisting futility of existence suggested in Beckett's words. Elsewhere, they stride purposefully with hunched shoulders dressed in black hats and trenchcoats or drag a chair, the friction of its legs against the ground producing a sustained drone that complements Paul Chavez's rich soundscape. Church bells, chickens, classical piano and barely intelligible speech are some of the elements the composer uses elsewhere, while Steinberg, in her role as lighting designer, restricts her colour palette to rich greens tinted with blue or sickly yellow, giving a tonal depth to the movement.

The disparate theatrical elements somehow coalesce into an apposite distillation of Beckett’s disjointed texts. Like those writings, the result isn’t a nihilistic depiction of nonsense, but an almost celebratory exposition of the constant comedy of existence.

Ends Friday