Michael Keegan-Dolan / Teaċ Daṁsa How to be a Dancer in Seventy-two Thousand Easy Lessons
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A powerful coming of age work that is playful, provoking and deadly serious.
From an Ireland in the 1970s to the present day, How to be a Dancer in Seventy-two Thousand Easy Lessons is a dance and theatre, music ritual that bends boundaries between what is lived and what is remembered, between history, destiny, fact and fantasy.
Written and choreographed by Michael Keegan-Dolan and directed by life-time collaborators, dancer Rachel Poirier and lighting designer, Adam Silverman, How to be a Dancer in Seventy-two Thousand Easy Lessons, has toured nationally and internationally and was nominated for a Sky Arts Award in 2024.
A co-production with the Gate Theatre and premiered at the 2022 Dublin Theatre Festival How to be a Dancer in Seventy-two Thousand Easy Lessons has become a worldwide success, with performances at The Galway International Arts Festival; St Ann’s Warehouse, New York; Théâtre de la Ville, Paris; The Everyman Theatre, Cork as part of the SFSH Festival; The Pavillion Theatre, Dun Laoghaire; the Cervantino Festival, Mexico; Teatros del Canal in Madrid; Féile na Bealtaine Arts Festival, Dingle and at Siamsa Tíre, Tralee, County Kerry.
How to be a Dancer in Seventy-two Thousand Easy Lessons is a work that travels down a rabbit hole of nationality, identity, xenophobia, ancestor worship, shame, death, defiance, love and dance.
Every Night & every Morn
Some to Misery are Born
Every Morn and every Night
Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to Endless Night
William Blake (1757 – 1827)
Header image description: A solo performer lunges in the centre of the image, one arm raised straight up, the other out behind him. He wears black trousers and a loose white shirt. Behind him is a brick wall, two ladders and a big box that someone is moving.
Header image © Fiona Morgan
Keegan-Dolan and Poirier take us back to the 1980s, to awkward schooldays, against the background of the hunger strikes and IRA bombings; to Keegan-Dolan’s experiences of violence at the hands of a priest and later of anti-Irish prejudice as a ballet student in London.
★★★★ THE GUARDIAN
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Michael Keegan-Dolan reflects on this career, upbringing and the rich collaborations that transform his practice.
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Members of the company and creative team in conversation. Free to same performance ticket holders. BSL interpreted.
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