The Personal and the Existential

There’s a dash of madness and oodles of heart in this 2022 dance theatre work from the choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan, who takes us on a whistlestop tour through his biography, including his childhood in 1970s Dublin and his breakthrough years as a dancer (and eventual dancemaker) in ‘90s London. There’s the silly, the tragic, the cringe and of course the confessional (he’s Irish-Catholic, after all), communicated through evocative monologue and snippets of song. The soundtrack is heavy on New Wave, a formative genre for Keegan-Dolan, who recalls the impact of eccentric hits like 1977’s “Psycho Killer:” “[I thought] if there’s a place in the world for Talking Heads frontman David Byrnes, maybe there’s a place for me.”

Performance

Teaċ Daṁsa: “How to be a Dancer in Seventy-two Thousand Easy Lessons” by Michael Keegan-Dolan

Place

Sadler’s Wells East, London, UK, October 17, 2025

Words

Sara Veale

Rachel Poirier and Michael Keegan-Dolan in Keegan-Dolan's “How to be a Dancer in Seventy-two Thousand Easy Lessons.” Photograph by Fiona Morgan

History and identity collide as we glimpse snapshots of his upbringing: his prized place among his gaggle of siblings, his violent run-ins with school priests, his pigeon-toed stance and the fretting it inspired. Seminal world events tick by in the background, steadying the timeline, including Bobby Sands’ death in 1981, when Keegan-Dolan was 12. His teen years see the twin influences of MTV and Gene Kelly coalesce into a dream to become a dancer, which he sets in motion by moving to London at 18 for ballet school, only to be swiftly humbled for his poor turnout. Fun insider details abound as his dance career finds lift-off: romantic bicycle journeys down Rosebery Avenue, the street leading to Sadler’s Wells, where Keegan-Dolan was an associate artist for many years; a botched audition with the revered choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker.

Rachel Poirier in Keegan-Dolan's “How to be a Dancer in Seventy-two Thousand Easy Lessons.” Photograph by Fiona Morgan

Rachel Poirier, Keegan-Dolan’s partner (both creative and romantic), accompanies him on stage, shoring up his musings with dramatic flourishes and background action. In the opening scene, she puffs on a cigarette and pulls a string of props—balloons, breeze blocks, bicycles—out of a crate, Mary Poppins-style, setting a suitably carnivalesque tone for the memories on parade. Most of the time she’s a welcome accessory to Keegan-Dolan’s diarising, especially in their joint cabaret send-up of an anti-Irish slur, although there are occasions when her antics intrude rather than complement.

Both performers sport excellent comedic timing, especially when the source material mingles the sweet and the crude, rendering misadventures like a fumbled sexual encounter as wistful rather than puerile. Keegan-Dolan aptly threads the needle between the personal and the existential, hitting a powerful stride when he sets comedy to the side to confront this thorny juncture, with recollections of his brother’s death, and a relative’s part in Dublin’s 1916 Easter Rising, coming into play.

Michael Keegan-Dolan in “How to be a Dancer in Seventy-two Thousand Easy Lessons.” Photograph by Fiona Morgan

Poirier is assigned the longest dance-focused scene of the show, an off-kilter, slightly crazed solo to Maurice Ravel’s relentless Boléro. While she rightly pulls focus with her stamina, and with the allegorical undertone of the music (Ravel supposedly replied to accusations of insanity with a ‘yes, you’ve understood my work’), I found myself eager to get back to Keegan-Dolan and his tender memoirs. From the pain of parental disappointment to the sweet release of a school disco, he knows how to tug a heartstring.

Sara Veale

Sara Veale is a London-based writer and editor. She's written about dance for the Observer, the Spectator, DanceTabs, Auditorium Magazine, Exeunt and more. Her first book, Untamed: The Radical Women of Modern Dance, was published in 2024.

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