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The press release for choreographer Emily Aoibheann’s Sorry Gold posed a question: “If aerial dance is the dance of industrial technology, what will the dance of biotechnology be?” Her answer was uplifting. A cast of five female dancers showed that dance of our time, or future, is about the collective not the single superstar. 

When the audience filed in to the great volumetric stage of the Space Upstairs at the Projects Arts Centre, the stage and cast were already revealed and in motion. Two pairs of women stood off-centre, whispering intensely into one another’s ears, while another looked on from the side. The stage felt forest-like – in place of trees were black chains and ropes hung suspended from the sky-high ceiling. Piles of fabric in various shades of pink, red and buff patterned the ground in triangular piles. The effect had the aura of a fairy tale. A bit Hansel and Gretel, a bit Little Red Riding Hood. 

The dance began with a wayward whisperer setting a chain in violent swinging motion. A frenetic dance began: the women rushed and leapt in contorted circuits across the stage with some great but unknown purpose – all while trying to avoid the swings and beatings of the overhead chains. It wasn’t a great leap to see these actions as a metaphor for ‘bodies at work’. Likewise, the soundtrack – reminiscent of what a techno nightclub might sound like if one were below  it – had the kind of anticipative foreboding that is representative of a very common ‘busy and anxious’ mood right now. When the chains stopped swinging, the dancers did some demented hugging of the outer stage walls which was quite gothic, but unexpectedly cathartic. 

The lights changed to a spotlight and a single dancer hung one pile of fabric from a chain and used it as a rope to clamber high into the air. Her journey displayed breathtaking strength, but didn’t entirely conceal the challenge. Occasionally, she looked out at the audience, but more as a way to connect with us – to invite us to share the struggle, not as a coy invitation to gaze. Her dance wasn’t erotic. It was an exploration of her physicality and humanity. It was refreshing for a woman to have a spotlight shine upon her, and not for it to automatically convert her to a sexual object. 

The final scenes brought together the themes introduced so far: of women in collaboration, making the best of a hostile, dissonant environment. At a particular high point, each dancer was suspended thirty metres in the air in a great billowing union of soft fabrics. But Sorry Gold wasn’t naive enough to end here. Instead, the dancers came back down to earth, shed off their fine fabrics, and stood apart underneath the sound of torrential rain – a little like we  are forced to do in everyday life. But though fragmented, they still mutually reinforced each other. One arm of each was gently turned out, a gesture to their loyalty to the group. 

Sorry Gold was about the relinquishing of the lure of individual glory. It was strange, slow and convincing. Perhaps it’s time to rewrite fairy tales – and make them about groups of women, not fay little girls.