Starlight Firkin Crane, Cork

Starlight is choreographed and produced by Fearghus Ó Conchúir, with support from the Firkin Crane Blank Canvas dance residency.

The work features two dancers, Matthew Morris and Peggy Grelat Dupont, who lead the audience around the venue’s various spaces, on-stage and off.

Morris is a slight figure, with a shaven head and tattoos. His manner is mischievous. In his first piece, he has two volunteers man a spotlight each, which they brighten and dim on his instructions as he gyrates beneath a voluminous black cloth.

Grelat Dupont, a tall, pale redhead, is more otherworldly again. As she dances, she instructs the audience to come closer, then pull back from her again.

Starlight is a provocative, beguiling work whose power resides in the performers’ proximity to their audience.

They’re so in-your-face that you can smell their sweat. In another discipline, that might be too close for comfort: In dance, it seems just right.

— Marc O’Sullivan