Dublin Dance Festival 2026: The Fifth Sun

Chris O'Rourke
May 15
3 min read

The Fifth Sun. Image, Luca Truffarelli

***

Seen in preview, The Fifth Sun describes itself in Artspeak terms that could mean anything or nothing. Humanity’s past confronting our turbulent present leaning cautiously toward an uncertain future. Trading in grief, hope and ancestors, dancers move to mourn, to honour, to listen and, perhaps, to heal, keening our world and ourselves in a collective act of dance. Choreographer Mufutau Yusuf striving for primal connections. The auditorium dark as ink, with smoke as dense as incense. Dancers gradually entering like cartoon sheeted ghosts standing upstage with their backs to the audience. Nine in total. Over the next hour Lee Curran’s warming lights will incrementally brighten before fading back into dark. Revealing a large, Stonehenge pillar structure, covered in hippie art, etched against the darkness. Tom Lane's excellent score will also rise and fade. From breaths to keenings like a call to prayer, music rises to a cacophony of pulverising, pile driving rhythms inducing a trance like state. Music also making the return journey, gradually falling back into the silence from which it arose. But all that comes later. Right now, a soloist finally breaks away and appears to notice the pillar. The other dancers shed their sheets as they begin shaking. All vigorous knee tremblers and hunched over shoulders. The image giving a whole other meaning to the term art wank. Which, arguably, is what the insufferable first third of The Fifth Sun amounts to in its botched attempt at dance theatre. It would be nice to say its pretentious labouring is done at this point, but it makes an unwelcome, albeit brief return at the end to bring energies full circle.

Up to this point, almost twenty minutes in, you would be wholly justified in demanding a refund and swearing off all future productions. But stay a moment. As they turn and take to the floor, dancers Robyn Byrne, Jou-Hsin Chu, Clara Kerr, Sean Lammer, Tom O’Gorman, Hamza Pirimo, Rosie Stebbing, Meghan Stevens and Chi Liu resemble hospital staff in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. Only here they’re the lunatics having taken over the asylum. Their call to dance banged out by a single resounding note on the worshipped pillar. Yusuf’s stirring choreography masterfully playing with weight, space and status. Bodies sliding, turning, straining on the floor; or seated low; arising to crouch, hunch, or huddle before standing and reaching higher. Spinning like dervishes, swarming like a murmuration, dancers frequently spiral off into resonant solos or duets. Chest tapping, assertive foot stamps, recoil snaps, all infused with Lane’s dynamic score evoke the potency of tribal ritual. Shared release experienced as bodies assert individuality alongside the consciousness that we all are one. Before the crescendo falls, the climax descends, and The Fifth Sun reaches for a reflective cigarette as it drifts back towards dance theatre. Dressed in skin coloured bodysuits, dancers face a sci-fi light emanating from the pillar. Slowly, laboriously, each removes a pillow, sets to the floor and lines up next to the others with a pillow wrapped around their head. Only arms and legs displayed as bodies rest, perhaps even sleep, like the aftermath of an orgy.

When Yusuf sets his mind to dance, The Fifth Sun delivers wildly intoxicating choreography enough to set your pulse racing. When The Fifth Sun suffers delusions of dance theatre, or performance art, it falls short of the experience it sets out to achieve. Its unnecessary labouring mostly creating a sense of unnecessary labouring. Undermining The Fifth Sun’s potential as an exhilarating dance experience. The Fifth Sun is Yusuf’s first evening length project as one of Luail - Ireland’s National Dance Company’s resident choreographers. On the evidence of which, Mufutau Yusuf might well have a glittering career.