The late Irish singer, songwriter and activist Sinéad O’Connor was, and remains, a heroine to many, not least to this show’s director and choreographer, Sonya Tayeh.
O’Connor was loved (and loathed by some, mostly male music execs) not only for her sometimes remarkable, even occasionally chart-topping music but also for her passionate and outspoken commitment to truth and justice. The latter, including tearing up a photo of the then-Pope on live TV to draw attention to abuse within the Catholic Church, may have got her labelled mad, bad and dangerous to know in the usual quarters, but she determinedly continued to speak out on issues like child abuse, human rights, racism, women’s rights and her own struggles with mental health until her death in July 2023.
Jennifer Nugent and Lisa Race in The Surge – An Ode to Sinead O’Connor. Photo credit Manuel Harlan.
Her passing came as a veritable body blow to director and choreographer Tayeh, the Tony Award-winning choreographer of Moulin Rouge: The Musical, who, according to the production notes, remembers hearing the news dancing in her loft with music blaring, filled with both grief and joy.
“I was really overwhelmed thinking about how much of an effect she has had on my life growing up. To me, Sinéad O’Connor’s music is rooted in a sense of a desire for freedom, an unrelenting righteousness and a quest for a spiritual awakening. The depth of emotion in her music is unmatched and vibrates through the dance space with such electric inspiration for me and has for decades now.”
Almost immediately she began this collaborative project, The Surge, with The Joyce Theater in New York, working with ten women dance artists from various disciplines and, crucially, ignoring any of the usual restrictions of age. The resulting piece is premiering at Aviva Studios/Factory International in Manchester and will subsequently be performed at The Joyce Theater. Betsy Cooper, Alison Clancy, Gabrielle Malone, Mor Mendel, Amy Miller, Jennifer Nugent, Karine Plantadit, Lisa Race, Monique Smith and Jin Ju Song-Begin are the dance artists on the dramatically-lit stage, with O’Connor’s music, from Just Like U Said It Would B and Troy to In This Heart by way of the restyled Loretta Lynn country hit Success Has Made A Failure Of Our Home fairly blaring out of the hall’s impressive sound system, interspersed with the voice of O’Connor herself reading extracts from her book Rememberings to frame the action.
Sonically, there are moments of great passion and intensity, from a proverbial whisper to a scream. When these chime, as they often do, with the undoubtedly skilled work of the dancers, the whole project comes alive on the stage. But too often there are longeurs, including lots of mystifying business with what I can only describe as church pews on wheels, where there is little discernible connection between sound and vision, moments where the dancers seem to have turned into UK TV dance troupe Pan’s People (ask your dad, young ‘uns). Thus far then, The Surge is less than the sum of its parts.
Main image: Cast of The Surge: An Ode to Sinéad O’Connor. Photo credit Tom Visser.
The Surge – An Ode To Sinéad O’Connor is at Aviva Studios, Manchester until June 27, 2026. For more information, click here.
