Review: OUT OF TIME at The Kennedy Center

Billed as an Irish dance place, Out of Time, presented as a part of the Kennedy Center's Ireland 100 festival, is actually much more. Equal parts dance, modern music performance, and memoir, Colin Dunne's stunning solo performance is full of depth and intelligence.

Irish dance is an art form most closely associated in America with Riverdance, the touring performance that mass-produced traditional dance for a commercial audience. Dunne was a part of its success, dancing and choreographing for a time until he reached a creative roadblock. Out of Time emerged as he studied contemporary dance, and the piece uses modern dance vocabulary to explore Dunne's relationship with his Irish roots.

The piece begins with a barefoot step dance that focuses the audience's attention. Dunne dances in minimal lighting to the sound of distant clattering and rolling that remind us of the taps he is not wearing. His footwork is precise but his movements are exploratory. There is a sense of yearning, of searching for something in the repetitive steps.

Two small boxes act as platform and projection screen as the piece progresses. Clips of video showing step dancers from the early 20th century play out on the tiny screens as Dunne dons shoes and microphones. Here's where the real magic starts. With the help of brilliant sound designer Fionán de Barra, Dunne's taps are looped, creating his own musical accompaniment. The results are eerie and entrancing. Dunne dances in conversation with the dancers of yesterday and with himself. At one point Colin Grenfell's lighting throws Dunne's shadow up on the wall, and the echoing sounds create the illusion that there are two dancers on stage. Dunne's physicality and precision is remarkable throughout.

Dunne digs deeper into the history Irish dance- its competitiveness, its showmanship, its lack of metaphor- with two spoken word pieces. Built on top of pneumonic tricks used by dancers to remember rhythms, the pieces toe the line between song, dance, and recitation. As the audience scrambles to categorize Dunne's performance, Dunne struggles to define Irish dance.

Out of Time closes with an explosion of fiddle music, the first music used in the show not produced by Dunne's shoes. Dunne is barefoot once again, moving joyfully across the stage. The sense of freedom in his movements is palpable. Here is tradition and the future, encapsulated in one dance. The audience is swept up in Dunne's sense of flight and delivered straight to a richly deserved standing ovation.

Ireland 100: Celebrating a Century of Irish Arts & Culture runs through June 5th at the Kennedy Center.

Photo credit: Peter Hallward

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