Dublin Dance Festival 2026: STORM 1.0

Imogen Alvares and Amir Sabra in Junk Ensemble's STORM 1.0. Image, Fionn McCann.

***

It's a consequence of festivals that you sometimes find yourself attending previews. An effort to try cover as many shows as possible during their short run. Such was the case for Junk Ensemble’s long awaited STORM 1.0, which opens on May 7th as part of Dublin Dance Festival 2026 (travelling to Hawk’s Well Theatre as part of Sligo Cairde Sligo Arts Festival on July 9th). Previews allowing for a first run in front of a live audience so things can settle. Yet mindful of issues that can arise in preview, STORM 1.0 has independent issues which often see it bluster rather than blow. The end result less a tempest so much as a storm in a tea cup, and an often choreographically shallow one at that.

Visually it gets off to a lacklustre start. Dancers Imogen Alvares and Amir Sabra scavenging through Morgana Machado Marques’s streets of plastic. In Sarah Bacon’s moody trench coats, or bin bag rain gear, they uncover scaffolding and gradually build a two level, narrow chrome structure you can just about stand on. All the while Stephen Dowd's mood lighting is steeped in Junk Ensemble's signature shadow. Choreography by Jessica Kennedy and Megan Kennedy, in collaboration with the dancers, soon serving up a short, silhouetted, diversity conscious duet. Shades of Greek folk dance, Western line dancing, Irish reels and Middle Eastern influences married to ballet and acrobatics with a contemporary dance twist. This pattern, interspersed with scaffold being draped with plastic sheets, establishing a choreographic foundation repeatedly returned to. Meanwhile, set builds impact on pacing and energy. The effect created less of stormy weather so much as occasional outbreaks in a sea of calm. Against which Denis Clohessy’s superb score sounds like the main event. A searing, storm and aftermath worthy soundtrack more often supported by movement than supporting them. Repetition again key, with several musical motifs being built around simple rhythmic phrases.

Amir Sabra and Imogen Alvares in Junk Ensemble's STORM 1.0. Image, Fionn McCann.

Throughout, there’s an inherent, dystopian Romanticism. Shadowed trench-coats, now abandoned, give way to a candle orange togetherness huddled behind cloudy gauze. Or to dancing in the soaking rain. Or pin prick constellations against which two bodies court intimate connection in the calm before the storm. Hilariously captured in a humorous routine suggesting if the tent is a rocking, don't come a knocking, unless it’s being blown downhill. Connection, frequently storm shattered, leaving dancers repeatedly returning to their choreographed foundation. The introduction of Les Neish sending STORM 1.0 spiralling down a foghorn rabbit hole. Like The Queen of Hearts brass band tuba player preparing for a Paddy's Day parade, Neish introduces skilful playing with some playful, Pythonesque humour. For a brief spell a stunning duet accompanying some musical, sensual slowness breaks the choreographic monotony. A taut, sublime solo for two soon followed by Alvares providing the only substantial evidence of unrelenting physicality. Bordering on durational performance art, Alvares’s flailing energy is palpable and magnetic. But in no time the build/dance/rebuild pattern re-emerges. Beach-combing for various items to suspend from the ceiling, punctuated by reproductions of the foundational sequence; events culminate in a violent cyclone. A fierce flaring of loud, furious frenzy. Like a fabulous finish to a stuttering firework display that often coughed and sputtered on its interrupted journey towards a big finale.

Thematically, a sense of endurance, or of unspecified storms destroying everything each time its repaired, be they worlds, dance routines or relationships, doesn’t quite land. More a sense of repeating the same response over and over and expecting a different outcome. Repeated patterns of choreographic regularity yielding the same old result. Reminiscent of stubborn Evangelists in Midwestern trailer parks in the middle of the Tornado Belt praying to Jesus each time their trailer gets destroyed. Rebuilding in the same place in the same way when maybe Jesus is trying to tell them something. Endurance and resilience undermined by Alvares and Sabra appearing like two moderately competent, poorly organised, in no immediate rush stage hands. Spending almost as much time constructing their health and safety set as performing in it. The effect often similar to watching The Wizard behind the curtain pulling rods and cables when what we really expected was to be whisked away in the arms of a tornado that would take us to Oz. Alas, we keep returning to Kansas. Yet, like its solo for two, there are moments when we travel the Yellow Brick Road embraced by the power of the tornado. STORM 1.0 frequently mesmerising and often touched by the breath of poetry.

STORM 1.0 by Junk Ensemble, runs at The Samuel Beckett Theatre as part of Dublin Dance Festival 2026 until May 8th, travelling to Hawk’s Well Theatre as part of Sligo Cairde Sligo Arts Festival on 9th July

For more information visit Dublin Dance Festival 2026 or Junk Ensemble