Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre exploded onto the Irish arts scene in 1997. It is led by Michael Keegan-Dolan, one of Ireland’s most talented, challenging and innovative artists, who demonstrates a thrilling ability to fuse the visual immediacy of dance with the narrative strength of theatre. Fabulous Beast creates productions which have their roots in Ireland and Irish experience, but which deal with universal and often controversial issues in modern society, making them accessible and challenging entertainment for a large audience from diverse backgrounds.

The company’s first production – at the Firkin Crane Centre, Cork – was Sunday Lunch, an examination of the dysfunctional Irish family, preparing for (and surviving) a Sunday lunch. It was designed by Joanna Connor, with original music by Denis Roche. It was revived in 1998 and performed in Dublin as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival. The cast was Rachel Lopez de la Nieta, Mick Dolan, Simon Rice, Jenny Roche, JJ Formento and Colm Seery.

In 1999, the company created Fragile, inspired by a quote from an early Renaissance painting – ‘Conception is sinful, Birth is a punishment, Life hard labour, Death inevitable’. Commissioned by the Dublin Fringe Festival, it was designed by Joanna Connor, with lighting by Tina MacHugh and original music by Denis Roche. The cast was Keith Synnott, Rachel Lopez de la Nieta, Bernadette Iglich and Simon Rice.

In 2000 the Project, Dublin, commissioned The Flowerbed, a work loosely based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Set in a fictional suburban landscape, two families fight to the death over the positioning of one family’s new flowerbed. The Flowerbed was designed by Rodney Grant and music was composed by Philip Feeney. The dancers were Rachel Lopez de la Nieta, Simon Rice, Bernadette Iglich, Mick Dolan, Alex Leonhartsberger and Jarko Lehmus.

In 2001, Fragile was revived and taken to France where it represented Irish choreography at the ‘festival of new dance,’ in Uzes, outside Nimes. A new work was created for the Project later that year: The Christmas Show was an explosion of ideas relating to the meaning and significance of the ritual of Christmas. It was designed by Lebanese designer Juman Malouf, with lighting by Adam Silverman and music by Philip Feeney. The cast was Christopher Robson, Rachel Lopez de la Nieta, Guy Ryan, Jonathan Schmidt and Alex Leonhartsberger.

Giselle premiered in 2003, and took Dublin and London by storm. It examined the universal condition of human suffering, which can be exasperated by living in a small town in the centre of a rural landscape. It was commissioned and co-produced by the Dublin Theatre Festival and Barbican bite, and subsequently toured to the U.S to the New Haven International Festival of Arts and Ideas in 2004. It was designed by Sophie Charlambous, with lighting by Adam Silverman and music composed by Philip Feeney. The cast was Daphne Strothmann in the title role, Mick Dolan, Simon Rice, Vladislav Benito Soltys, Milos Galko, Emmanuel Obeya, Bill Lengfelder, Angelo Smimmo, Neil Paris and Christopher Morgan. Giselle won the Judges’ Special Award at the 2004 Irish Times/ESB Theatre Awards in Dublin, was nominated for an Olivier Award in London in 2006, and has been invited to tour all over the world.

In 2005 the company created the second part of the Midlands Trilogy, The Bull, a co-production between bite at the Barbican and the Dublin Theatre Festival. Following a sell-out run during the 2005 Dublin Theatre Festival, it will play at the Barbican in February-March 2007. The Bull is based on the ancient Irish epic The Táin. It was designed by Merle Hensel with lighting by Adam Silverman and music by Philip Feeney. The cast was Olwen Fouéré, Daphne Strothmann, Rachel Poirier, Mick Dolan, Bill Lengfelder, Robbie Harris, Colin Dunne, Conor Lovett, Gianluca Pezzino, Mani Obeya, Angelo Smimmo, Vladislav Benito Soltys, Milos Galko and Neil Paris.In 2006 Fabulous Beast was honoured to be invited to become an Associate Company to the Barbican Centre, London. The Flowerbed was revived for the Pit Theatre in the Barbican, and toured to Dublin as part of the Dublin Fringe Festival. The design was revived by Merle Hensel with lighting by Adam Silverman. The cast was Mick Dolan, Neil Paris, Rachel Poirier, Daphne Strothmann, Esther Balfe, Milos Galko and Vladislav, Benito. The Flowerbed was nominated for a Critic’s Circle Dance Award in the UK in the category of Best Modern Choreography. In 2007 the company began research on James Son of James, the third part of the Midlands Trilogy. It tells the tale of a man who returns to his home in the midlands of Ireland after eleven years in the Far East. It will have its world premiere as part of the 50th anniversary Dublin Theatre Festival in October 2007 and it will play at the Barbican in February 2008. Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre has been invited to tour on four continents in 2007-2008.

Many images come and go. Some stay with you for years and refuse to go away. These are the images you have to take seriously. These are the images which are trying to tell you something either about yourself or something more general. Over the years I have slowly begun to realise that my personal development and the development of my work for the theatre are one and same. When I become clear so does my work.

In real time, in live theatre, the most exciting art of all, the body will always betray the actor no matter how apparently ‘good’ he or she is. If for example the actor is playing the role of Macbeth in a traditional setting, he may be able to remember his lines, and he may have a strong and beautiful voice, but if we the audience can see by the tone and shape of his gut and the weakness in his legs that he most probably has never ridden a horse and neither could he swing a broad sword with any real intent, we will be doomed to sit in disbelieving, disenchanted silence in the crowded seating bank for the duration of the production. Countless times I have heard an actor’s voice expertly expressing an emotion and I see behind it a body that is strangulated, rigid and expressionless, a body held to ransom by that actor’s own personal physicality and limited range of movement, bearing little or no resemblance to the imagined body of the portrayed character expressing the given emotion.

In spite of everything we impose upon ourselves in an attempt to make life more pleasing we will always be fundamentally physical beings. We can stop walking, watch hours of television, use e-mail and carry a mobile phone but we can never until death escape the structure that encases our minds and our souls, if one is so disposed to believe in such things as souls. It is the separation between the mental and the physical, the cerebral and the visceral, the internal and the external of which we must be very careful. Many actors are just talking heads and many dancers are not even headless bodies, as many have had the sense and power of their own natural physicality taken from them by the pursuit of an external manifestation of perfection. They have neither body nor voice.

When I work with a group it should be clear that everyone is ready to undertake a process of training. If the body is not at a certain level of preparedness, injury will visit it. When prepared, we work to unblock blockages, sensitise areas of insensitivity and slowly remove physical habits or impositions that have been accumulated over the years. I write this with caution knowing that I have not nearly arrived there myself, but eventually (this can take many years, even lifetimes) I do believe that one will arrive back at a place where one’s body is open, free of mannerisms, sensitive and capable of working in unison with the mind.

Grotowski wrote that an actor cannot become another person until the actor can truly and fully be themselves. I agree with this. How can we inhabit the physicality of a character we must play when we cannot fully inhabit our own? We in the world of the theatre are obliged to discover our true natures, our true bodies and our true voices.

When I work to develop how a character might move, dance or talk, I look at the physical structure, the appearance of that character first. For example, is he tall, small, heavy or light? Does he move sharply or roll from one gesture to the next? How much tension does he hold in his muscles while resting? What element dominates his physicality: fire, water, wind or earth? What is his or her natural tempo, what is his rhythm? How does he breathe? I no longer have any doubt that the external shape is a clear projection of the interior nature of a person.

I also work with sensation and energy. How do I feel when I visualise a certain type of person, either being that person or being in their company? Where does tension manifest in my body when I concentrate on this imagined character’s corporeal image: in the throat, the neck, the abdomen or pelvis? I see and then feel my way around the characters who will eventually occupy the landscape of the piece. These characters then become the building blocks of our productions.

A certain set of pre-existing physical characteristics automatically dictates how a person will move in space. The act of movement fully exposes the interior working of a character. When we walk down the street we unconsciously send thousands of signals about who we are, and passers-by unconsciously pick these thousands of signals up. With a well trained eye and a sensitive nature one can read a person without hearing a word spoken. In this way words become secondary. The voice and its quality are equal to that of the body and its quality. The voice is dependent on the body, in a sense the body; is the voice. Most actors’ faces are the most expressive and dextrous parts of their anatomy, closely followed by their hands. The rest of their instrument is very often left firmly behind in the shadows. However we can teach the less developed regions of our anatomy with the parts which we use more expertly. By relaxing the face we can in fact effect the relaxation of the body. By making a fist and squeezing it softly we can teach our abdomens to have the correct tone.

With the importance of the face in film and television, the lure of big money and the nature of our existing education system it is tempting and easy to leave the body behind, but I would encourage you not to. Someday, sometime, somewhere you will encounter a performer who has both aspects of his or her being highly developed but in equal measure and when you do, you will never forget the experience.

Michael Keegan-Dolan

For the past ten years Fabulous Beast has been building an international reputation as one of the most daring and highly original dance theatre companies in the world. Now, after two previous triumphs in London –Giselle and the Flowerbed- Fabulous Beast presents a third, The Bull even more dazzling and ambitious.
****
Debra Craine The Times

A savage, scarily hilarious kill-or-cure-and-don’t-mind-your-language extravaganza! The cast is uniformly splendid. This is vastly entertaining! Keegan-Dolan has energy, a beady eye, a flaring sense of the ridiculous and a no less bright, if despairing honesty. This is a bold and bullish piece of angry wit. Vaut le voyage.
****
Clement Crisp The Financial Times

Fabulous Beast have never been more successful than breathing subversive life into their material than in this production titled The Bull. A ruthlessly comic anatomisation of greed, stupidity and corruption as the two families, their pets, their lovers, even the cast of an Irish dance show (Celtic Bitch) are slaughtered in a deliriously accelerating torrent of tribal bloodlust. This is murderously good satire from which only the bull emerges unscathed.
****
Judith Mackrell The Guardian

The Bull is a grotesque, hilarious and precisely crafted culture clash. Draw a line from Samuel Beckett to Quentin Tarantino and somewhere along it you’ll find Michael Keegan-Dolan.
Luke Jennings The Observer

A curse filled, savagely brilliant, Tarantino-like retelling of an epic Irish tale. Its daring, dazzling, sharply satirical — and bloody funny.
Siobhan Murphy Metro London

Fabulous Beast are a class act. A class act who swear a lot, and engage in simulated fornication. And a little bit of gratuitous nudity. And a lot of violence. But a slick outfit nonetheless. Deftly and seamlessly done with belly laughs and grisly murder en route. A multitalented and multinational cast led by Olwen Fouéré, Irelands edgiest actress as steely matriarch Maeve. It is both serious and highly watchable entertainment.
Lyndsey Winship The Daily Telegraph

Michael Keegan-Dolan’s company just keeps getting better, his vision richer, his production values impeccable. This man has a fresh sense of ensemble dance that ranges from the eerie to the grotesque. His Grand Guignol comedy of horrors is irresistible. I just had to wallow in a compelling evening of entertaining theatre.
*****
Allen Robertson Time Out London

In this rip-roaring production, Fabulous Beast director Michael Keegan-Dolan takes it by the horns drumming out a blackly comic tale of murder lust and avarice that punches above its weight as both dance and drama. London won’t be so easily shocked just royally entertained!
****
Keith Watson Metro London