Wednesday, February 4

Tag: Michael Keegan-Dolan

MÁM – The Lowry
North West

MÁM – The Lowry

According to the director and choreographer of this scintillating piece of art, Michael Keegan-Dolan, “A mám is a pass through the mountains. It’s a geographical structure that encourages people to go a certain way.” He goes on to say it can also mean an “obligation”, adding, “Sometimes as artists, you feel this obligation to do something, even if you can’t really say why.” This is an artistic endeavour of the highest quality. It is an imaginative combination of dance, theatre and music. Taking you on a journey through love, despair, longing, and joy. It is both intense and free, structured and loose, disparate and unifying. It starts with a devilish figure holding a concertina, facing a child. He takes off his mask, and the dancers start creating a beat, and the movement begins. ...
Faust – Royal Opera House
London

Faust – Royal Opera House

Everybody knows the tale of Faust although Gounod’s popular five-act, Parisian grand opera from 1859 is in fact adapted from Michel Carré’s play ‘Faust et Marguerite’ which was itself based on Part I of Goethe’s epic poem Faust. Very much reflective of the nature of Second-Empire Paris at that time, the obvious question is whether its themes remain relevant and recognisable to a 21st C audience. Director David McVicar wisely recognised that human nature doesn’t really change and the issues of sensuality and hedonism, religion and morality, bourgeois consumption versus socialist redistribution, to name but a few at the heart of this opera, continue to go hand in hand, and his richly layered 2004 production for Royal Opera House brilliantly captured these through the artificial edifices o...