Trojans

Trojans by Philip Connaughton, presented by Luail - Ireland's National Dance Company. Image, Luca Truffarelli

****

One of the art’s immeasurable joys is discovering alternate readings of texts. Reading gender, feminism, Marxism, politics, post-colonialism, post-modernism whether consciously or unconsciously present. Discovering that in the Victorian audience for Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, heterosexuals were laughing at one thing whilst homosexuals were laughing at the complete opposite to what seemed intended. The possibility of reading something opposite to what the author intended informing Philip Connaughton’s exhilarating Trojans. An interrogation of displacement by way of The Aeneid which charts the Trojans search for a new home following the sack of Troy. First performed at Cork Midsummer Festival 2023, Trojans uses The Aeneid as a jumping off point to reorganise the relationship between seeing and what’s being seen, challenging culturally conditioned modes of looking and engagement. Aspiring to foster awareness of the audience’s own presence as a body, and of the body, in relationship to what’s being presented. Becoming, at times, the very thing it tries to escape whilst promoting ideas it wants to challenge.

Hamza Pirimo in Trojans by Philip Connaughton, presented by Luail - Ireland's National Dance Company. Image, Luca Truffarelli

It might be easier to illustrate. You enter a large, darkened space surrounded on four sides by chairs covered in orange netting pressed against the wall. Each wall dominated by a large screen like an indoor drive-in movie, or an auditorium about to show a sporting event. You’re instructed to stand in the middle of the room. A tight island of people clustered in Begoña Garcia Navis’ semi-darkness, conversing, finding gazes, or avoiding gazes. All the while Oberman Knocks’ uncomfortable soundscape creates audial overload, like psychological torture designed to disorientate. You remember you were offered earplugs upon entrance. Use them, it will save you a blinding headache later. Presently, Luca Truffarelli’s all pervasive video screens issue written instructions advising us what to do, how best to behave. Art has become Big Brother, promoting a new cultural paradigm. Instructing us to stay standing. Unannounced, uninvited, dancers enter the space like Juno with her royal attendants. Crawling, prowling, crouching, dressed in Emily Ní Bhroin’s charity shop cast offs, like shabby sportswear sent to refugees camps. Our small, cramped island repositions to accommodate our new arrivals, forcing bodies closer to make room. Juno walks sternly between the dancers instructing each to die. They fall to the floor in violent agony executing dragged out death scenes before us. Will we, too, be asked to die at Juno's royal whim, or in the name of someone else’s greater good? Big Brother instructs us to move closer. To look into their eyes. Presently they stand and we move in and around the dancers, as instructed, until told to sit. Our island ceded to the new arrivals. The space, once ours, now theirs. The audience no longer within the field of performance. A change from acquiescing participant to passive observer imposed by Big Brother’s guided interactions. One could be forgiven if sympathy or empathy are thwarted. For wondering who it is that’s being bodily displaced; the dancers or the audience forced out of the space to the margins? Of wondering if Trojans’ propaganda might be batting for the other team?

Trojans by Philip Connaughton, presented by Luail - Ireland's National Dance Company. Image, Luca Truffarelli

What follows makes clear Connaughton’s true intentions by way of his most exhilarating choreography to date. Wild, passionate, sensual and vibrant, a diverse company of dancers - Joanna Banks, Robyn Byrne, Jou-Hsin Chu, Clara Kerr, Sean Lammer, Tom O’Gorman, Hamza Pirimo, Rosie Stebbing, Chi Liu and Meghan Stevens - electrify the space as bodies whirl. A shambles of signature stylings convey joy, violence and tenderness, coalescing in and out of communities of shared movement, some frentic, others solid and still. Traces of ballet, hip hop, cheerleader trust falls and even Charleston informing wild and powerful sequences. From solos to up to eight or ten participants, a variety of scenes emerge. Two lovers in sensual duet share squares of light; human animals bark at what could be a meme of a sick looking white dog; a long line of children cry; projected images of churning seas, lapping waves and bombed out cities inform more than incite. All the while the density of Knocks' rhythmic, sonic score unsettles the body as a perceptual system. The shift from standing, subjective participant to seated, objective observer facilitating a shift from public exteriority back to private interiority. Subverted, near the end, as dancers take our hands. Looking to re-establish the frail, fractured bond mislaid since Trojans’ vibrant, opening moments.

Trojans by Philip Connaughton, presented by Luail - Ireland's National Dance Company. Image, Luca Truffarelli

Bold, brave and choreographically brilliant, if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, there is much to behold in Trojans. Reimagining our relationship to what we perceive and of ourselves as subjects of perception, its initial focus on the body emphasises seeing is never just about looking. That visual essentialism ignores direct, bodily connections. If it feels like cultural reconditioning, and seems to promote the opposite of its intended aims at times, that’s part of the thrill. Trojans dance at its the most invigorating, diverse, exhilarating and challenging. A roaring triumph for Luail, Ireland’s National Dance Company, who are to be commended for reviving this terrific production that reminds us of our shared humanity. Leaving you deeply moved and compelled to read dance, displacement and diversity differently. One of this years most choreographically exciting and viscerally powerfully shows, Trojans is not to be missed. Whetting the appetite for Dublin Dance Festival 2026 later this month.

Trojans, by Philip Connaughton, presented by Luail, Ireland’s National Dance Company, runs  at Project Arts Centre, Dublin, until Saturday, April 4th.

Black Box, Galway, April 10th, 11th

Island Hall, Lagan Valley Island, Lisburn, April 29th, 30th

For more information visit venue websites or Luail