When he sets his mind to dance, the work delivers wildly intoxicating movement.
In Dublin, a young choreographer's first major work invites us to consider what happens when the body's ancient intelligence is asked to carry the additional weight of conceptual ambition. Mufutau Yusuf's The Fifth Sun, presented at the Dublin Dance Festival through Ireland's National Dance Company, arrives as both a genuine revelation and a cautionary tale — proof that the most powerful human expression sometimes needs only itself to be complete.
- Nine dancers in white sheets, a smoke-filled stage, and twenty laborious opening minutes signal a work straining under the burden of its own grand intentions.
- When the choreography finally breaks free of its conceptual scaffolding, the piece ignites — bodies swarming, spinning, and stamping with the raw potency of tribal ritual, pulling the audience into something visceral and alive.
- The production repeatedly retreats from its own best instincts, dressing dancers in skin-colored bodysuits and staging slow, self-serious tableaux that mistake obscurity for profundity.
- The unresolved tension between Yusuf's exceptional movement-making and his theatrical pretensions leaves the work uneven — thrilling in its peaks, frustrating in its indulgences.
- As a debut evening-length work for a national company, The Fifth Sun marks the arrival of a significant choreographic voice, one that may yet learn to trust the dance over the concept.
The auditorium fills with darkness and smoke. Nine dancers stand upstage in white sheets, backs to the audience, waiting. This is The Fifth Sun, Mufutau Yusuf's first evening-length work for Luail, Ireland's National Dance Company — and it opens with a question it will spend the next hour wrestling with: what happens when dance tries to become something more than dance?
For nearly twenty minutes, the piece labors under the weight of its own ambitions. Dancers shed their sheets and begin shaking — vigorous tremors, hunched shoulders — while Tom Lane's score rises from breath-like whispers to trance-inducing rhythms. Lee Curran's design reveals a large pillar etched with hippie art against the darkness. The program promises the familiar language of contemporary theatre: grief, hope, ancestors, collective mourning. It sounds like it could mean almost anything, and for a while, it does.
But something shifts. As the dancers take to the floor, Yusuf's choreography suddenly seizes control. What emerges is genuinely stirring — bodies sliding and spinning, rising to crouch before reaching higher, swarming like a murmuration of starlings. The movement draws from something primal: chest taps, assertive foot stamps, recoil snaps, all infused with the potency of tribal ritual. Individual dancers spiral into solos and duets while remaining tethered to the collective. This is where The Fifth Sun becomes intoxicating.
Yet the piece cannot resist returning to its theatrical conceits. As the climax descends, dancers in skin-colored bodysuits face a sci-fi light emanating from the pillar, then slowly, laboriously, each removes a pillow and lines up with it wrapped around their head — an image that feels like it means something profound but mostly feels like unnecessary labor.
The tension at the heart of The Fifth Sun is the tension between what Yusuf can do as a choreographer and what he seems to think the piece needs to be as theatre. When he trusts the dance, the work delivers wildly intoxicating movement. When it suffers delusions of conceptual theatre, it falls short of its promise. For a debut of this scale, the work still signals a glittering career ahead — if Yusuf learns to trust the choreography more than the concept.
The auditorium fills with darkness and smoke. Nine dancers stand upstage in white sheets, their backs to the audience, waiting. This is The Fifth Sun, choreographer Mufutau Yusuf's first evening-length work for Luail, Ireland's National Dance Company, and it opens with a question the piece will spend the next hour wrestling with: what happens when dance tries to become something more than dance?
The program promises the usual language of contemporary theatre—humanity's past meeting a turbulent present, grief and hope and ancestors, a collective act of mourning and healing. It sounds like it could mean almost anything. As the lights warm incrementally and Lee Curran's design reveals a large pillar structure etched with hippie art against the darkness, the piece settles into what can only be called performance art. Dancers shed their sheets and begin shaking—vigorous knee tremors, hunched shoulders, the kind of physical vocabulary that makes you wonder if you've paid to watch someone work through something private. Tom Lane's score rises from breath-like whispers to keening sounds and then to rhythms so heavy they feel like they're meant to induce a trance. For nearly twenty minutes, The Fifth Sun labors under the weight of its own conceptual ambitions, and you would be entirely justified in wanting your money back.
But something shifts. As the dancers turn and take to the floor, Robyn Byrne, Jou-Hsin Chu, Clara Kerr, Sean Lammer, Tom O'Gorman, Hamza Pirimo, Rosie Stebbing, Meghan Stevens, and Chi Liu suddenly resemble the inmates of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest—except they've seized control. A single note rings out from the pillar, and Yusuf's choreography takes over. What emerges is genuinely stirring: bodies sliding and turning on the floor, rising to crouch and hunch before reaching higher, spinning like dervishes, swarming like a murmuration of starlings. The movement vocabulary draws from something primal—chest taps, assertive foot stamps, recoil snaps—all of it infused with the potency of tribal ritual. Individual dancers spiral off into solos and duets while remaining tethered to the collective consciousness. This is where The Fifth Sun becomes intoxicating, where it sets your pulse racing.
Yet the piece cannot resist returning to its theatrical conceits. As the crescendo falls and the climax descends, the dancers drift back toward performance art. Dressed in skin-colored bodysuits, they face a sci-fi light emanating from the pillar. Slowly, laboriously, each removes a pillow, sets it on the floor, and lines up with the pillow wrapped around their head—arms and legs displayed as bodies rest, perhaps sleep, like the aftermath of an orgy. It is the kind of image that feels like it means something profound, but mostly it feels like unnecessary labor.
The tension at the heart of The Fifth Sun is the tension between what Yusuf can do as a choreographer and what he seems to think the piece needs to be as theatre. When he sets his mind to dance, the work delivers wildly intoxicating movement. When it suffers delusions of being performance art or conceptual theatre, it falls short of what it promises. The pretension mostly creates pretension, undermining the potential for an exhilarating dance experience. For a debut evening-length project, The Fifth Sun suggests Yusuf has a glittering career ahead—if he learns to trust the choreography more than the concept.
Citações Notáveis
When Yusuf sets his mind to dance, The Fifth Sun delivers wildly intoxicating choreography enough to set your pulse racing. When The Fifth Sun suffers delusions of dance theatre, or performance art, it falls short of the experience it sets out to achieve.— The Arts Review
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why does the piece keep pulling away from its own best impulses?
I think Yusuf is still learning the difference between what moves a body and what moves an audience. The dance itself—the spinning, the swarming—that's pure. But then he wraps it in this conceptual language about ancestors and healing, and suddenly the movement has to serve an idea instead of being the idea.
Is the theatrical framing completely without merit?
Not entirely. The opening does establish something—a sense of emergence, of stepping out of darkness. But it takes too long to get there, and by the time the real choreography arrives, you're already skeptical. The ending makes the same mistake again.
What would you tell Yusuf about his next piece?
Trust the bodies. The moment those nine dancers start moving together, the room changes. That's where the primal connection actually lives. The pillows and the sci-fi lights and the conceptual scaffolding—that's all noise.
Do you think he has the career the review suggests?
Absolutely. The choreography in the middle section is genuinely accomplished. He understands weight, space, how to make nine bodies feel like one organism and nine individuals at the same time. That's not something you can teach. He just needs to stop apologizing for being a choreographer.