"this is an Irish dance": Jean Butler at Danspace Project

Neil Martin and Jean Butler
perform this is an Irish dance at Danspace Project.
(photos: Ian Douglas)

Jean Butler might still be best known for Riverdance--the global Irish dance phenomenon she starred in with Michael Flatley--but she has moved on to a new level of inquiry in contemporary dance. this is an Irish dance, her thoughtful and poetic performance with cellist/composer Neil Martin at Danspace Project, helps us hear music not only in the duet of instrument and movement but also in the sensitive aliveness within silence, stillness and near darkness.

To make this work, the two artists collaborated through simultaneous improvisation. We read the living record of those explorations as they perform or even just regard each other across space, or as Butler quietly holds the cello for Martin as he busies himself with pushing a white cube a short distance. The warmth of his cello's voice contrasts with her sculpted serenity. Its heartful earthiness creates a trusty base for her still-very-Irish lightfootedness.

In an essay for this production, Butler writes of the supremely controlled form of Irish dancing as "a gesture of defiance," meant to elevate the Irish stereotyped by the English as "uncivilized, unruly, and of questionable character." I tried to understand this notion of physical self-restraint as a form of defiance. As a Black woman, I know how, under similar racist conditions, self-restraint can be a strategy for survival, if a self-erasing one. But an act of defiance? Nevertheless, Butler's birdlike physicality does reveal the powerful presence and strength within cool control, a self-awareness and a witty, mercurial facility that could as readily be turned to battle as to fanciful play.

Frank Conway's set further complicates things, evoking the aftermath of some unidentified disaster the two performers have survived. Upon first entering the church sanctuary and seeing his arrangement, I flashed back to the time I passed through my wife's art studio and closed its door behind me just as its ceiling collapsed.

Aside from a narrow, plain white table and a few white cubes, Conway has spilled jagged chunks of white foamcore down two sides of the floor--heavy piles near the altar steps tapering down into lighter remains and finally single pieces close to the audience. Although Butler and Martin rarely interact with this wreckage, it's hard to not be aware of its presence as they interact with each other.

Are we not all living with the wreckage of past injury and, quite likely in these times, foreboding? And do we not all, despite our first misgivings, hope to move beyond these things and find ways to connect and to heal?

this is an Irish dance continues through November 21 with performances at 8pm. For information and tickets, click here.

Danspace Project
St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery
131 East 10th Street (at Second Avenue), Manhattan
(map/directions)

Jean Butler premieres "hurry"

Jean Butler (photo by Ian Douglas)

Jean Butler--it should come as no surprise--has a great sense of presentation and self-presentation. In fact, she most reminds me of penmanship--the exacting kind I learned in Catholic grammar school and which inevitably loosened and drained away with time. A tall switch of a woman, Butler does not so much dance as write and etch her way across the floor and space, making the existence of thought and will starkly visible.

Her body as well as her intense focus define having everything in its place, and it's hard to look at her and forget her world-famous career in traditional Irish dance. As a recent sojourner in the world of New York's contemporary dance, she herself wants to forget none of this but, rather, burrow into it and see where grounded tradition and identity can lead her. With her new solo hurry, directed by Jon Kinzel, she's on her way, and that, for now, must be enough.

What can be done with rigidity and precision? Arms once constrained to this dancer's sides now jut and lock in place at a sharp angle as she cocks and twists one foot against the floor. Or they form an elegant wingspan which, after all, would have to be held taut as a bird takes to a thermal. When she scoops her torso or allows hips to wriggle and knees to be spongy, she measures out each move so nothing's ever wasted. She acknowledges gravity, and the body's core, never once losing the look of one invisibly suspended from above.

Her palpable self-consciousness keeps us from slipping into the trance of watching a body dance. We're watching a mind dance--not to be forgotten. There's instruction in this, even if it is a tad distancing (like the similarly alienating sound score with its overt and covert disturbances, friction and haunting reverb). Perhaps it's good to be held, for a time, in this place of wanting but not being able to just let go. There's something to be learned here.

As Butler addresses the space at St. Mark's--treading, sometimes just nearly tripping along a loop of infinity--Michael O'Connor's lighting, melancholy in its glow, emphasizes the exposure and the loneliness of her position.

The solo's title, hurry, derives from an Irish ballad, but there's only one tiny, ethereal suggestion of Irish music--courtesy of Ivan Goff on uilleann pipes--late in the score. Nor does hurry seem particularly hurried. Although it lasts just 35 minutes, it appears to exist in a place of memory and contemplation removed from the rush of time.

Near hurry's end, the barefoot Butler, turned away from us and toward a far corner of the church, suddenly channels the old Irish steps. How strange--and, at last, emotionally engaging--to gaze at this star from behind as she appears to dance into the lights of a familiar stage. For the viewer, it skews the perspective, raising questions: Who could see Butler from behind except another dancer? That would mean you're also dancing on that stage, would it not? If so, how does it feel to face those lights?

Music by Jim Dawson. Sound design by Jim Dawson and Jon Kinzel. Costume by Sylvia Grieser.

hurry continues at Danspace Project tonight or Saturday at 8pm. Click here for program information and here for tickets.

Danspace Project
131 East 10th Street (at 2nd Avenue), Manhattan
(directions)

Related: Jean Butler prepares a new solo for Danspace Project

Jean Butler prepares a new solo for Danspace Project

Jean Butler in hurry (photo by Ian Douglas)

For many people in the US and abroad, New York-born and raised Jean Butler became the beloved face of Irish traditional dance, most notably through her star role in the megahit musical Riverdance, her partnership with Colin Dunne in Dancing on Dangerous Ground, as well as many appearances on tour with The Chieftains. Most of her fans might not be aware that this highly disciplined artist, so strongly rooted in her Irish ancestral culture, continues to challenge herself through forging impressive connections to New York's postmodern dance community.

In 2010, Butler made her Danspace Project debut, premiering Day, a solo work she commissioned from acclaimed choreographer Tere O’Connor. This winter (Thursday-Saturday, March 7-9), she returns to Danspace Project with a work of her own creation–a solo entitled hurry--that she has developed with Jon Kinzel as her director.

With O'Connor, Butler felt comfortable settling into the role of dancer. "There was a very clear-cut understanding that Tere was the choreographer," she says. "He had the last say, and I was there to put myself firmly in his process."

After decades of excelling in traditional dance, she was ready to try a new path.

"I wanted to challenge myself physically and also performatively, because his work is so nuanced in terms of how you perform it. I was very attracted to Tere’s aesthetic and still am. That felt like a very natural choice for me, especially to introduce myself to New York in a completely different way from my history."

Jean Butler (photo by Conor Horgan)

So, what prompted Butler to look to Irish traditions, once again, for her next solo? It seems to have come out of a desire to understand her identity as a woman and a sharp, specifically-trained instrument of art.

"I thought, It’s time to go back now and start re-evaluating how that experience with Tere affected my approach towards dancemaking, my approach towards vocabulary, my sensibilities–or not, as the case may be. It was time for me to go back into my history and my own body.

"It would be a solo, but I wanted an outside eye. I wanted the director working with me. I’m so close to what I do, and my body is so codified within a particular traditional lexicon, that sometimes I can’t see the woods for the trees. I wanted someone to be a translator to push me deeper into the work, because that’s my interest–going deeper into the body.

"Some of the things Jon brought to the table were things that I had taken for granted. He started taking apart my understanding of rhythm. He recognized that I had an innate sense of duration: How long is a minute? How long is a few minutes? How long is fifteen seconds? We started looking at time in that way. Jon also has a huge improvisation background, and that was something that I wanted to dive into a little bit, specifically with the musical elements in creating this form.

"Sometimes I feel I’m a little island in the New York dance world. Because I work on myself and I work on solos, having Jon in the dialogue, he’s been able to put language on ideas that I haven’t been able to find language for. That’s extremely helpful, invaluable. He helps me identify what I’m trying to talk about and what I’m trying to do, and that becomes a dialogue rather than simply a reflection.

"This does not come out of any conceptual ideas or any outside ideas. It starts with the body, dealing with things that define me physically–my verticality, the innate rhythm and timing that exist within my body, footwork, the idea of stepping, the fact that I’m most comfortable with my limbs close to my center. I’m less comfortable when they’re further away. I’m less comfortable when I’m off my center.

"Instead of ignoring those things, this piece would be about going as deep into them as I possibly can at this moment, finding the dance language that is idiosyncratic to me, and not imposing other techniques or other ideas on top of that, going deeper to locate what motivates me to move."

hurry grew out of a 16-minute draft or, as she also calls it, a "flavor palette of different ideas" that Butler presented for APAP last year. The impetus was a traditional Irish tune, one she had danced to for many years.

"I could sing it to you now, I can sing it in my sleep, like a lot of music that’s in my head. The title of that was 'Hurry the Jug,' and I shortened that to hurry. It really doesn’t mean anything, doesn't symbolize anything. Like 'The Blackbird': In traditional Irish music, they are just names of tunes.

"I took the music's structure as a compositional starting point and created a circular phrase that I could use while this music was going on in my head that nobody else could hear. That was the architecture of one tiny section, the seed to the entire piece. Ironically, as we’re making the piece, more music has come up and embedded itself compositionally, though the audience would be unaware of this.

"I don’t want to impose anything on the title but, from a personal point of view, there’s a lot you can read into it: It’s about age, about an older dancer, about the speed at which I can move and working against that as a counterpoint. So, ironically, it became this very relevant word. As the piece goes on, you find more and more connections."

In recent months, Butler has begun lecturing on Irish studies at New York University, offering an introductory survey of the history of Irish dance, its competitions and spectacles and current master performers, such as her colleague Dunne. She rejects the popular notion of "pushing the boundaries" of tradition. Instead, she says, her course material focuses on artists who innovate by "going deeper into it as opposed to pushing away from it; analyzing what is, not putting things on top of it so that it becomes something else."

Clearly, her own work in hurry springs from this quest to find more of the dance that is already there, to see it and show it as if for the first time.

See hurry at Danspace Project, Thursday-Saturday, March 7-9 (8pm). Click here for program information and here for tickets.

Danspace Project
131 East 10th Street (at 2nd Avenue, Manhattan
(directions)

and a few more things...

In the course of preparing for my talk with Butler, I made a surprising discovery: For a few years now, she has maintained a jewelry business filled with elegant, lyrical designs inspired by her Irish heritage. She describes her interest in jewelry as “an opportunity to be creative in something that is not ephemeral, something completely solid in front of you.” Visit Jean Butler Jewellery at this link.

Also, click here for a lovely portrait of Butler in a video series for The Gathering Ireland 2013, a year-long celebration of Ireland and all things Irish.

BIO

Jean Butler has been dancing for over thirty years. Trained in Traditional Irish Dance under revered NY based teacher Donny Golden, Jean  spent her childhood on the competitive circuit winning regional, national, and world awards. As soloist, Jean has toured with many Irish recording artists, most notably the Chieftains for a period of 6 years. In 1994 she joined the original production team of Riverdance as co-choreographer, creating and performing the principal female role. Jean performed with the company for three years before leaving to team up with colleague Colin Dunne to produce and choreograph Dancing on Dangerous Ground, which had exclusive engagements at Drury Lane, London (1999) and Radio City Music Hall, New York. (2000). In April 1999 she was awarded the prestigious Irish Post Award for her outstanding contribution to Irish Dance. Jean holds a BA in Theatre Studies from Birmingham University, England and in 2003 completed a Masters in Contemporary Dance Performance at The World Academy, Limerick University where she was also Artist in Residence between 2003-2005. During this time, Jean became interested in a different physicality. 

In 2007, Jean choreographed her first contemporary solo piece, does she take sugar? which ran at Project Arts Centre, Dublin. The show was awarded ‘most innovative production’ in the critics’ survey in Ballet-Tanz Magazine Yearbook 2007 and was remounted at the Dublin Dance Festival 2008, mentored by Jodi Melnick. Her  solo works have been commissioned and supported by The Arts Council of Ireland,The Dublin Dance Festival, Culture Ireland, The Project Arts Centre (Dublin), Daghdha Dance Company (Limerick), Plankton Productions (Japan), Movement Research (New York), the Abbey Theatre (Dublin), Danspace Project (New York), Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Lower Manhattan Cultural  Council.

Jean is also a 2012 Project CATALYST, an initiative of Project Arts Centre. Recently Jean had the privilege of working with Tere O’Conner on DAY, a solo, choreographed by Tere. Commissioned by the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, DAY was first co-presented at the Dublin Dance Festival 2010 and at Danspace Project in Nov. 2010. 

Jean currently lives in New York and lectures in Irish Studies at NYU.

Last night of "Day"

So. I really don't have a taste for Josh Groban, but whenever I see an article about an artist who's changing directions, I like to take a look. You never know.

And so, this morning, I'm reading music critic Nate Chinen's Times piece on Groban, and I come across this quote from the singer's new producer, the genius Rick Rubin:

"The nature of Josh's instrument is formal," Mr. Rubin explained. "And so even if it was a song that meant a lot to him, when he sang it casually, it didn't sound believable."

And I said, Thank you, genius Rick Rubin. In those two sentences, you've summed up what I thought walking away from one of Danspace Project's last presentations of Day, the well-publicized breakthrough collaboration between dancer Jean Butler (best known for Irish step dancing and her choreography and starring role in Riverdance) and choreographer Tere O'Connor (whose stature in contemporary choreography is unquestionable). I respect and enjoy both of these artists and have particular fondness for Butler who was one of my dance writing students at DTW. But I have to disagree with previous writers who have found interest in Day since its premiere in May at the Dublin Dance Festival.

Like Groban--sorry to bring him up again; bear with me--Butler has a superbly refined instrument. Like another celebrity, Baryshnikov--her creative exploration has already been compared to his--she's eager to take a chance and stretch herself beyond past definitions and limitations. In Day, you can clearly see that she brings a determined work ethic. And this is a piece that certainly requires that, demanding rapid changes in physical force and expressiveness over an unbroken 40-minute stretch. There's a driven quality, lots of stressors, tiny moves, isolations, opposing directions, steps to keep track of and properly linked despite their weirdly disparate nature. What she gets right is--no surprise--a formal precision in all things even during awkward, strained or frenzied moments, of which there are many.

A virtuoso tears down her virtuosity in a way that requires her to be...a virtuoso. Day seems to me to be a shake-it-up, break-it-down strategy for Butler--a transitional work but not, in itself, a satisfying work from the point of view of at least this watcher.

James Baker's rich, alarming soundscape jumbles together things that don't belong together, don't hook up but, through his diabolical editing, share the same space and breathe the same air. It makes you feel the need for medication and fits Day to a T. Michael O'Connor (design) and Sylvia Grieser (costume) have gone for an austerity that might or might not have something to do with the dance itself--the white translucent curtains draped across St. Mark's Church's balconies, windows and entrance; lighting that sometimes seems capricious and disordered; the plain tunic of a bottle-ink blue that beckons memories of Catholic grammar school. It might be the vivid ink-like color that made me think of perfect penmanship (and its proponents, those nuns) and suspect that Butler was as good at it as I was, back in the day.

Her dancing in Day is exacting penmanship, very contained and self-conscious. Despite the forcefulness of her motions, her energy does not project beyond the lines of the choreography and, with neither comrades nor props for help, she does not inhabit what is a very roomy performance space resonant in dance history. What you really want from Butler's penmanship is some sense of the person crafting those individual letters, what any string of them might have to say and why they're urgent.

Let us wait and see what Butler can do. I believe she can reach for more than this.