Tom Creed, the theatre and dance curator, for his final year, excelled himself with a glorious mixed media explosion of the trusted, the new and the crazy fringe stuff. In his four years he has delivered so well.
His dance programme kicked off with Tabernacle at the Watergate Theatre produced by Ferghus O’Conchuir. This over-long at 80 minutes piece advertised as – contains nudity – opened with three male and two female dancers onstage in a suggested church or chapel and for a while I got the impression, a strange Stations of the Cross was taking place with excellent dance or movement passages to sad Iarla O’Lionard songs of Ochon, Ochon is Ochon O.
There was a lot of sensual touching, beating of breasts in supplication, naked breasts and a male dancer with a dangling appendage pierced with a shiny stainless steel penile jewellery.
After a while I felt this was a story of sperm on a journey and the sperm discovering despite ritual and breaking free, their only function was to make sperm. A bleak and messy prospect.