Returning to Troy

Only three years after its premiere at Cork’s Midsummer Festival, Philip Connaughton finds his work of epic proportions, “Trojans,” in the hands of Luail. Ireland’s all-island dance company will bring the work to audiences north and south, where they can expect to get right up close to the action. Connaughton spoke with us to discuss what audiences can expect to get up to, Irish dance icon Joanna Banks, and his own personal history with Virgil’s legendary work. This conversation has been edited for clarity.

Luail in “Trojans” by Philip Connaughton. Photograph by Luca Truffarelli

You have your own personal history with “The Aeneid,” tell us a little bit about that.

One of my first jobs coming out of my training in Rambert was at La Scala in Milan. Coming from Ballymun in Dublin, which is quite working-class, I was lucky to have parents who allowed me to go into ballet—they hadn’t a clue really—and I found a teacher who got me to London. I was suddenly in Milan in this production of “The Trojans” by Berlioz. Karl Lagerfeld was doing the costumes; it was full of this grandiose operatic madness—it was beautiful! I was blown away by the epicness of everything. In Ireland we think very big, but our infrastructure doesn’t always allow for that type of big thinking. It was nearly thirty years ago, and it stayed with me.

That was my ideal epicness, but as I went and started making choreography much later my themes were very autobiographical. More recently I was caring for my mother who had dementia and I started making work from that perspective, it really helped us get through that whole thing. That led to me doing collaborative work with Marie Brett, a visual artist, who was doing work about this oncoming legislation, the Assisted Decision-Making Capacity Act. It was very visually focused; we had all these interviews with carers across Ireland who shared the same story as me. That made me start to think a lot about care.

Then I started working with [performance art group] ThisIsPopBaby. We were dealing with chemsex and drugs within the queer community. Looking at care in a queer context, which resonated with my role as the carer in my family who was also the queer person in the family. So it all worked its way from the more personal to the wider: care, care in the community, care within legislation—which is a very odd thing. That brought me back to the epicness of “ The Trojans,” this very big, romantic, very long opera.

So, why “The Aeneid”?

I wasn’t so interested in the romantic story between Dido and Aeneas but the epic experience while at the theatre. I read The Aeneid and as I was reading it, and I don't want to be reductive about it, I felt that all the stories were so petty! We’re still doing the same things. It could almost be composed of storylines from Murder She Wrote. I think one of the things that struck me apart from the continuing of this pettiness and war was how the value systems of the time were quite different. It’s very much about fate and destiny and the greater good, setting things up so our future might be better. And I feel we live now in a society where everything is so immediate—with our politics but even to Instagram and social media. Everything is more immediate, we don’t often consider the bigger picture. Even in civic manners, and public behaviour.

What also interests me is that it is basically a book of propaganda for Augustus Caesar. To recount the founding of Rome by the Trojans and how it led to the wonder of the Caesar. Sort of like how Dante’s Divine Comedy is bitching about people living in Florence at that particular time! (He laughs) The Aeneid is like that. We need to see a connection to the past, at our common traits, but also looking at how values have changed, and how we might reassess that.

Luail in “Trojans” by Philip Connaughton. Photograph by Luca Truffarelli

It’s interesting that this work, which derives from an ancient text where conflict and war is so present, couldn't be more timely. Even though it only premiered three years ago.

It’s funny because I was worried the work itself may become dated since 2023. But watching it now, staging it on these new dancers, it is crazy how relevant it all still is. I felt that while reading the story that we never really learn. It’s very sad and frightening.

“Trojans” looks like a real Gesämkunstwerk, so many elements are at play here, including audience interaction. How does that take shape when the work is performed?

There’s a lot of information in the work, which is contributed by videos from the filmmaker Luca Truffarelli. The audience is given very specific directions, which they can choose to follow or not. I was quite curious to see how the audience, who are sat in the round all in one row, might interact with the dancers. One instruction is to cross the stage to another seat, the first time we did it, it was so seamless and quick like a street crossing in Hong Kong or New York. It was actually too quick for me! When we asked the audience to move across the stage extremely slowly it was much more interesting. By changing the wording you can choreograph the audience a different way to the night before. On the outside looking in the audience is as important a part of the work as the dancers who perform. There’s something about the autonomy and conditioning, the decision-making.

In one section I ask the audience to look at the dancers individually. We ask them to get closer and closer still, to get close and look into their eyes. By the end of the piece they’re really connected to the cast. As a group they’ve all participated. When we initially did it in Cork in the Marina Market I could watch the piece from far off in the sound desk, kind of like looking down from a spaceship.

Luail in “Trojans” by Philip Connaughton. Photograph by Luca Truffarelli

It’s quite a feat that “Trojans” is being remounted on the national company so quickly after its premiere. What is it like working with the company on this revival?

It’s really incredible. I’m so grateful because often you’ll make a work, you invest all this energy into it, it has a life, and then it’s over. Unless you’re lucky to access the very limited funding pot for touring dance work in Ireland, which is really competitive, the piece kind of dies. I applied and wasn’t lucky. I actually presented it in Dance House in Dublin as a studio showing, and from there I was invited by Luail to mount it on the company.

The Luail dancers are great, it’s a new cast to the original of course but I’ve brought back Joanna Banks who plays many roles, one of them being Juno. “The Aeneid” is basically Juno’s revenge on the Trojans because she doesn’t want Rome to be the chosen city, she wants it to be Carthage, and she does everything she can to destroy them knowing she won’t get her way—all very petty and sort of fabulous. Joanna is 85 or 86 now. I’ve worked with her for thirty years. She’s kind of an Irish contemporary dance icon, so it’s great having her with these dancers who are at the start of their careers. Even though she’s at the other end of her career she’s still pushing forward and creating, she’s not nostalgic about it. I think it's great that there’s that rich exchange between her and the younger cast members.

“Trojans” will run in Dublin’s Project Arts Centre March 26 - April 4, Galway’s Black Box April 10 & 11, and Lisburn’s Lagan Valley Island, April 29-30.

Eoin Fenton

Eoin (they/he) is a dance maker and writer based in Cork (Rep. of Ireland), and London (UK). They have danced across Ireland and London in venues including The Place, Project Arts Centre Dublin and Galway Cathedral. Eoin graduated with a BA in Choreography from Middlesex University in 2024 and began writing as part of the Resolution Reviews programme. They are a regular contributor to A Young(ish) Perspective.

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