MÁM

CPH STAGE Copenhagen is a default stand-in for Denmark's yearly festival of theatre. With a partly-curated and partly-open program, the festival sees a month of performance, discussions, and events surrounding Danish and international stage art, with the part curated by Festival Director Morten Krogh happening mostly around the Royal Playhouse ("Skuespilhuset"), luxuriously-set against Copenhagen's lavish waterfront.

The 2026 festival opens with MÁM, a now-7-year old show from noted Irish choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan. Or, more accurately, it began with the choreographer himself making an exuberant welcome announcement, and leading the standing audience in a couple of meditation-inspired breathing exercises. As well as grooming audience receptiveness to the show, the welcome address serves to introduce the audience to Keegan-Dolan's delightful ego, and he makes sure to point out that "there's a post-show discussion with The Artist... ME!" It's a curious beginning to a curious opening show, one that ticked the boxes in terms of slick international aesthetics, prestige, and crowd-pleasing spectacle, even if leaving little traces of groundedness. 

For MÁM is a strange devil. It's originally produced in 2019 by Teaċ Daṁsa with Dublin Theatre Festival; Sadler’s Wells London and New Zealand Festival, making its premiere in Dublin before gallivanting around on a global tour for the last few years, with the Berlin-based ensemble s t a r g a z e and lead accordionist Cormac Begley (who anchors the thing with a deadly barrage of accordion)  trailing along. They perform together with an ensemble of dancers, and a local child actor (in the CPH performance, Liva Eurasia Simonsen-Køllgaard Mochia) who moves with some trepidation through the various staged realities as the dancers and musicians whirl around her. But what exactly is the thing? How to decode the bizarre and fervent mysticism of light, sound, and movement that swirls around us, even as it swirls around our would-be-protagonist? Should we even be enacting such a sacrilegious gesture towards a work that, for all accounts, presents itself as an untouchable beam of memory, inspiration, and brilliance?

 

 Images - Ros Kavanagh

MÁM opens with the young girl dressed in white, a defined top-light pinning her from above. Behind, an animal-masked figure massages an accordion in and out wheezingly as the young girl unboxes a package and the house-lights slowly fade. A row of animal-masked, tuxedoed figures gradually appears behind her, a white backdrop and top lighting (Adam Silverman) offering a crisp, pagan-inspired silhouetted dreamscape that primes set designer Sabine Dargent's visual smorgasbord, offering a constant flip-flop of symmetry and asymmetry denoted in the playful variations of the dancers' costumes (Hyemi Shin), and mirrored in the choreography as they move through a series of unreliable formations (with one occasionally breaking the mould with a grunt or flourish, to the occasional shock of the others). Are they reaching out to our protagonist? Protecting her? Attempting and failing at their own internal systemic unity? Or simply creating a surreal, somewhat threatening realm for her to try and navigate?

It's a pattern repeated throughout MÁM, sitting more as an undercurrent, as something of an argument for self- and cultural expression takes over. As accordionist Begley takes the lead and begins to 'squeeze the box', the space seems to compress and extend infinitely with him, with the dancers likewise hyper-extending and gargantuanising themselves seemingly at will, making the hazy space (which The Artist Keegan-Dolan would explain late as inspired by the local pubs he would visit with his mother and father as a child) swim as though in a drunken daze.

Keegan-Dolan's choreography is likewise disorienting, with random bursts of movement emerging out of the inner depths of some void. MÁM is, perhaps above all things, very sudden in its shifts and changes, as though tapping into some deep and primal plane. A circle around the child initiates a type of 'drunken sailor' movement, only to transition into random, occasionally-synchronised bursts of laughter emerging from the dancers out of an almost existential stillness. Then mix it up with a traditional jig (why not? That won't be confusing!) as the ensemble descends into a celebratory invitation of giddiness that seems almost unchoreographic in its familial warmth, incorporating (co-opting?) the child into its merriment as the lighting likewise switches to ale-hall sepia, a mash-in of comfort and nostalgia.

 Whatever you make of MÁM's cocktail of signification, you can't fault it for a lack of complete commitment. It's not just a bag of tricks, either. The trajectory slowly out of threat and into nostalgia and familiarity denotes a recapturing and protection of tradition specific to Irish cultures - something that is at once celebrated, and presented as somewhat othered. Planned dysfunctions in the design playfully deconstruct the staged reality for the second half, with a curtain track comically falling to a 45-degree angle as the Berlin-based s t a r g a z e ensemble (oboe, double bass, guitar, piano/Indian harmonium, drums, and violin) join Begley for the almost trad-session vibe, with Irish cultural throwback mixed with a contemporary influence of Berlinish liminal jazzy experimentation. This intercultural synchronisation is undeniably powerful, creating a harmonious discordance that mirrors the dance and design gestures - at once celebration, and with a tinge of estrangement. 

Among MÁM's features is an interesting attention to energy-management - it's not afraid to let the ball drop sometimes.  It's commitment to self-expression is confirmed with a zany interlude where a dancers goes and makes out with each individual dancer and musician in a weird kind of pronounced, still atmosphere, before approaching the young girl and giving her a fist-bump/jellyfish in a darkly perverse acknowledgement to her presence in an at least partly erotically-charged spectacle. (Sexual self-expression has its limits, one hopes, especially among the constant wave of sexual abuse in the performing arts). The moment sticks out, as so many in MÁM do, as a sort of weird, but not exactly uncomfortable, mix of trauma, memory, resistance, and celebration, channelling a dark mystical power and pouring it unashamedly into the Copenhagen stage.

I like MÁM. I feel I should say that, because it's easy to hate this kind of thing for its commitment to a crowd-pleasing, fantastic aesthetic universe. But there's an honestly to it's core, one that would be just as at-home in the pubs of An Longfort from which it sprung, with the beam of top-down stage light over the band replaced by a naked light bulb, swinging and flickering. Representationally, there are a couple of challenges: the role of the young girl, especially, as a kind of hollow, floating symbol for naivety is a cliché that's just repeated in too many virtuoso stagings (it personally gave me flashbacks to David Atkins' opening ceremony for the 2000 Sydney Olympics, but there are many versions of this) and - logistical challenges of child acting aside - if she's going to be in the work then she needs more agency. It's not enough to give her a big Beyoncé-like finale with a million fans blowing her hair out and a strong silhouetting backlight blinding the audience. She needs to be actually built into the structure of the performance, if she's going to be there at all. At the same time, the performance in Copenhagen from Eurasia Simonsen-Køllgaard Mochia should be celebrated, as the young dancer navigates this dark forest with confidence and honesty, projecting an at-home vibe among a nest of unfamiliarity.

 

Keegan-Dolan describes the work as "coming out of the stories, the river, the land, out of this man", meaning Begley, who anchors the work as a bearer of a particular stream of Irish tradition. There's an honesty to that coupled with the simple energy of artists encountering each other. The energy of resilience and undefeatedness gives the work its real power, drawing as it does on the backdrop of historical persecution or Irish musicians and the enduring nature of those cultures (again touched on my Keegan-Dolan, referring specifically to the English colonial persecution of Irish harpists in the 16-1700s). It seems a strangely political note for MÁM, which equally masquerades as a bit of fun spectacle, granting it at once a particular subversive power, whilst perhaps unfortunately draping it in an air of dismissability or forgettability. Could it itself be an enduring masterwork, defined by honesty and forceful authenticity? Or is it destined to join the carousel of grandstanding international works of unending opening nights, replete with production prowess, and yet instantly categorisable as showcasing, commodified stage-branding?

One tends to lean away from the latter reading, erring on the side of generosity towards a work with an authentic heart. Although, at least part of your correspondent wishes he was enjoying MÁM from a wonderfully creaky stool of in Irish pub. But perhaps that's the point.

 

MÁM

Direction and Choreography.
Michael Keegan-Dolan

Music.
Cormac Begley and s t a r g a z e (David Six, Gwen Reed, Marlies van Gangelen, Timon Koomen, Dylan Lynch)

Set Design.
Sabine Dargent

Lighting Design.
Adam Silverman

Costume Design.
Hyemi Shin

Sound Design.
Helen Atkinson

With:  Liva Eurasia Simonsen-Køllgaard Mochia, Imogen Alvares, Cormac Begley, Romain Bly, Tyler Carney, Kim Ceysens, Lisa De Boos, Aki Iwamoto, Zen Jefferson, Mayah Kadish, Amit Noy, James O’Hara, Keir Patrick, Rachel Poirier, Connor Scott, David Six, James Southward, Carys Staton, Aart Strootman, Maaike Van der Linde and Marlies Van Gangelen 
 

The author was an invited guest of the festival through the "CPH Off Stage" Program.