Who dares invoke an “ideal Ireland” these days? Well, David Bolger does in his powerful and ultimately joyous new show “Touch Me” at Project Theatre. “A noble future” is even alluded to by a crackly recording of Eamon De Valera in his famous “The Ireland I have dreamed of” address to the nation on St. Patrick’s day, 1943.

It’s apt that CoisCeim’s new show ‘Touch Me’ premiered on 11/11/11, the day of the presidential inauguration, an ideal moment to pause for thought on who we are as a people, and what it means to be Irish.

In his poetic new show, Bolger reminds us that we’ve come a long way from the sheer idealism of our founders, to the empty monopoly houses and devastation that a crass and reckless Tiger has left as road kill in his wake.

Overhung by one solitary, naked lightbulb, Monica Frawley’s down-at-heel set could be out of an O’Casey play (except for a bust-up washing machine) – a ramshackle tenement with high ceilings of once elegant proportions, let fall into rack and ruin, through sheer neglect.  Not unlike our national sense of pride, this is a house in dire need of some maintenance.

Yet, there is sheer joy and even transcendence in the inventive dance of Bolger’s six wonderful dancers’ and the snake-charming allure of Kenneth Edge’s onstage sax playing, weaving its own spell over us.  Dressed in black, Edge plays from the side, weaving his way across the set sometimes, enjoying an easy interaction with these lithe and emotional dancers.

Always connected, looking each other in the eye as they brush past each other, the dancers joust playfully in childhood games, at one point reminding me of Sean Gallagher performing his black belt moves. They spin each other around like spinning tops. Waves of group choreography come and go throughout this thoughtful, ultimately uplifting show, building up to the ecstatic dance of whirling dervishes.

It’s all down to contact between people and carrying each other, in Bolger’s connected, interdependent dance.  In a brilliant duet across a table, Jen Fleenor and Nick McGough embody the “couple”, literally and metaphorically holding on to each other – keeping the other from falling. Dancers lean on, and support each other, taking each other’s weight, if they can.  Robert Jackson and the athletic Nick McGough joust a lovely duet.

Poignant tableaux emerge and dissolve, for a moment James Hosty on the washing machine is reminiscent of the crucifixion, for another Emma O’Kane of St. Sebastian, shot by keys instead of arrows.

Harsher moments are allowed to interrupt the Irish lullabies, and the tooralooraloo’s.  Darker tales of contemporary Ireland we all recognise first-hand are cleverly juxtaposed with vibrant slides of red haired, freckle-faced John Hinde, and quaint Irish cottage-Ireland.  In what turns out to be a sporadic role-call of iconic Irish moments we are even treated to John Wayne and The Quiet Man.

But the pièce de resistance has to be “Mary Harney”.  As a choreographer, Bolger is an expert in the minutiae of gesture.  Here, helped by sound designers Vincent O’Doherty and Ivan Birthistle, he zones in on audio pauses, the revealing um’s and hesitations of in-between speech patterns. Studiously embodied by Emma O’Kane, “Hello” she says, over and over again, as you try to figure out who is the owner of this strangely familiar voice. “It’s nice to have the opportunity to talk to you”.  And then: “We did it with the economy, and now we’ll do it with health as well”… Who else could it be? Who ever said dance can’t make a hilarious sideways political statement?

As much as everyday gestures and intakes of breath, in Bolger’s world, the opinion of the everyday person is king. Researching this piece, he put a list of ten questions to random Irish people, from “what makes you sad?”, to “where is society going to now?”, to “what makes you happy?”  (“Dancing” was an oft-repeated answer to the latter).   Audio out-takes allude to by-passed old-time cautious rules for taking out a mortgage “never more than three times your salary”, compared with being given a loan for “ten times your salary”.  No wonder at one point the poor dancers seem to suffer a collective breakdown shaking, driven demented by the heavy metal lyrics: “Touch me, I’m sick”.

According to Bolger’s dance-treatise on the condition of contemporary Ireland, it’s clearly the strength and resilience of the people that will get us through this dark age of “greed aftermath”.  Not to mention the sheer creativity and imagination of artists like David Bolger, who can turn it all into visual poetry, and transform this misery into one giant poignant key dance. We dance on.

Unexpectedly this self-interrogation of a nation, facing up to the harsh realities and disappointments of contemporary Ireland culminates in an exhilarating and life-affirming ending. Bolger dexterously manages to have us leaving the theatre uplifted, with a renewed faith in ourselves.  Dancing at the Crossroads is clearly where it’s at, if we are to survive this national catastrophe at all, at all.

By Deirdre Mulrooney

PS: Here is some food for thought: Eamon De Valera’s 1943 St. Patrick’s Day speech:

“The ideal Ireland that we would have, the Ireland that we dreamed of, would be the home of a people who valued material wealth only as a basis for right living, of a people who, satisfied with frugal comfort, devoted their leisure to the things of the spirit – a land whose countryside would be bright with cosy homesteads, whose fields and villages would be joyous with the sounds of industry, with the romping of sturdy children, the contest of athletic youths and the laughter of happy maidens, whose firesides would be forums for the wisdom of serene old age”.