{"id":762911,"date":"2026-06-26T17:38:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T17:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/762911\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T17:38:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T17:38:11","slug":"the-surge-review-a-wild-and-haunting-wake-for-sinead-oconnor-dance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/762911\/","title":{"rendered":"The Surge review \u2013 a wild and haunting wake for Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Connor | Dance"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018I\u2019m just a troubled soul who needs to scream into a mic now and then,\u201d said Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Connor. Troubles and screams both sing out in The Surge, an ode to her by American choreographer Sonya Tayeh.<\/p>\n

The singer, who died in 2023, attracted both worship and scorn in her lifetime. The Surge is an act of devotion \u2013 10 women sit on pews, swaying, sliding and indeed surging around them. They leap up, circle and shudder as the songs possess them \u2013 moved and inspired, they might be dancing in tongues.<\/p>\n

Those dancers are the show\u2019s glory. Many have paid their dues in New York\u2019s indie dance scene \u2013 now mature performers (their combined age, we\u2019re told, is over 500), they are compact with talent and experience. These are faces that have seen things, and that see us, their gazes often raking over the audience. At times, it feels as if they are dancing the story of their lives.<\/p>\n

Glorious \u2026 The Surge\u2019s company. Photograph: Manuel Harlan<\/p>\n

The singer\u2019s own grainy, poetic voiceover snakes through the show, in audiobook extracts from her memoir. \u201cSongs are ghosts,\u201d she says. Her music inflects the evening like a haunting: piercing, howling, as guitars thrash and squall through songs of striving, fury and misbegotten romance.<\/p>\n

Tayeh, best known in the UK for choreographing the musical Moulin Rouge!<\/a>, has a wide-ranging portfolio: most recently, a musical based on the ballet horror Black Swan. Her movement here is inventive and frequently thrilling, especially in unison, but can\u2019t maintain the initial level of quivering intensity, the middle section becoming a series of mournful vignettes.<\/p>\n

Even so, there are plenty of striking moments. Karine Plantadit\u2019s solo, suspended and shaken, to Tiny Grief Song; Lisa Race\u2019s resilient slide down tilted benches; the ensemble rocking out to Red Football. Throughout, Tom Visser\u2019s superbly textural, low-level lighting washes the stage in copper or sickly green (he also designs the set).<\/p>\n

If this is a wake, it\u2019s a wild one. It\u2019s a paradox of O\u2019Connor\u2019s art that her intensely personal songs, informed by her biography and quixotic spiritual calling, spoke so keenly to so many. The Surge ends with its dancers\u2019 poignant handclasp \u2013 a community, grieving but exalted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018I\u2019m just a troubled soul who needs to scream into a mic now and then,\u201d said Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Connor.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":762912,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-762911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=762911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/762912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=762911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=762911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=762911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}