{"id":501053,"date":"2026-06-19T15:15:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T15:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/501053\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T15:15:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T15:15:12","slug":"i-hope-she-hears-us-through-the-clouds-the-rumbling-thrusting-dance-piece-paying-tribute-to-sinead-oconnor-dance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/501053\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I hope she hears us through the clouds\u2019: the rumbling, thrusting dance piece paying tribute to Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Connor | Dance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sonya Tayeh remembers watching Saturday Night Live<\/a> in October 1992, at home in Detroit, when a young, shaven-headed woman behind a microphone tore a picture of Pope John Paul II into pieces, while saying: \u201cFight the real enemy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt like the entire world paused,\u201d remembers Tayeh, still in wonder at Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Connor\u2019s protest against abuses in the Catholic church, and the defiance in \u201cthose eyes that just seep through your soul and burn \u2026 It was like I could feel the world vibrate under my feet. I was overcome,\u201d she says, on our video call from New York. I can see Tayeh has one side of her head shaved \u2013 a long curtain of dark hair sweeps down the other.<\/p>\n

It was a watershed moment for the teenage Tayeh, but much more so for O\u2019Connor, as the backlash derailed her soaring career. Some say it was deliberate self-sabotage by an artist who didn\u2019t want to be a pop star. (O\u2019Connor later said in her memoir, Rememberings<\/a>: \u201cI am a protest singer. I just had stuff to get off my chest. I had no desire for fame.\u201d)<\/p>\n

double quotation markI was blaring her records, wrapped up in grief. She was so ahead of the game, but she was vilified so heavily<\/p>\n

The Dublin singer\u2019s life might have seemed a world away from a Lebanese\u2013Palestinian girl growing up in a Muslim family, immersed at the time in Detroit\u2019s underground rave scene. But O\u2019Connor\u2019s spirit spoke to Tayeh: \u201cI was the kid that shaved her head and grew her armpit hair out, and was, like, \u2018Fight the real enemy!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

When O\u2019Connor died in July 2023, there came gushing tributes to a woman who had struggled with her mental health and had often been maligned and ridiculed during her lifetime. \u201cAfterwards, you give all this grace to this person you had beaten down?\u201d says Tayeh, who was by that point an award-winning choreographer. \u201cWhen Sin\u00e9ad passed, I was really broken up about it. I was painting my room, blaring her records, wrapped up in grief and thinking about how the world had denied her. She was so ahead of the game, but she was vilified so heavily.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tayeh had been in discussion with New York\u2019s Joyce theatre about making a new dance piece, but hadn\u2019t found the right idea. Suddenly, listening to O\u2019Connor\u2019s song Troy one day, it clicked. \u201cI had this really clear vision of just women, sweaty women in a line.\u201d She called her producer and said: \u201cI have it! It\u2019s a piece to Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Connor\u2019s music, with women over 40. And he was like: \u2018Fuck yeah.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Jennifer Nugent and Lisa Race in The Surge: An Ode to Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Connor. Photograph: Kate Garner<\/p>\n

O\u2019Connor was 56 when she died and still making music \u2013 she had almost completed a new album. To be a middle-aged woman in the music industry is a rarity, but dance isn\u2019t so different, says Tayeh. At 49, she\u2019s always wondering: where are the dancers her age? Where are the artists talking about their lives, bodies and experiences as they get older?<\/p>\n

So those were the beginnings of The Surge \u2013 the title refers to a surge of energy, \u201ca hyper-awakening, a rumbling, a thrust\u201d \u2013 which is about to have its world premiere in Manchester. At the outset, Tayeh had no idea what the work would be. \u201cI said: \u2018I don\u2019t have a piece yet. I don\u2019t have a company yet, but I have this incredible, heart-wrenching, heart-pumping source material. So let\u2019s start there.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

It might seem like an unexpected choice for Tayeh, given that she\u2019s known for her Tony award-winning choreography for the musical Moulin Rouge! \u2013 a red velvet and glitz extravaganza of fast-cut pop songs that\u2019s still playing all over the world (currently on a UK tour<\/a>). But her career takes in all corners of music and dance culture: she started dancing in Detroit clubs in the 90s, then worked with pop stars (Miley Cyrus, Kylie, Florence + the Machine) as well as revered troupes such as the Martha Graham Dance Company. Most recently, Tayeh choreographed the stage version of Girl, Interrupted in New York, and directed and choreographed the new Black Swan musical.<\/p>\n

The Surge is certainly one of the most personal projects Tayeh has undertaken. She tells me she has listened to the audiobook of O\u2019Connor\u2019s memoir \u2013 narrated by the musician herself \u2013 10 times.<\/p>\n

double quotation markHearing her, I was like: OK, I\u2019m not gonna die. I can actually create a world for myself and a voice for myself<\/p>\n

It is a turbulent story: O\u2019Connor was treated badly by her mother, and describes violent physical and verbal abuse, being locked in her room and in a garden shed for hours on end. It was a chaotic family life, but at 15, O\u2019Connor was sent to a boarding school for wayward girls, adjoined to a former Magdalene laundry. It was a nun there who bought O\u2019Connor a guitar. Her early songs of anger and confusion gave way to her later hymns of healing and forgiveness, and she was always spiritually searching, from her deep Catholic roots to Rastafarianism to her conversion to Islam.<\/p>\n

Tayeh relates to O\u2019Connor\u2019s spirituality and her questioning of the religion in which she grew up. Though it was more than that; it was the musician\u2019s \u201cfull-frontal demand to be heard\u201d, she says, which \u201cconnected to some really monumentally tough childhood experiences. Her howling was like my insides.\u201d Tayeh was bullied when she was young. \u201cExtreme bullying. We were the only Arab family in my community,\u201d she says. She describes \u201chaving to literally place your hand over your head to protect yourself when you\u2019re walking through the hallways. It creates a foundation of fear and rage. That\u2019s very confusing when you\u2019re 12.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hearing O\u2019Connor\u2019s music gave Tayeh hope. \u201cI was like, OK, I\u2019m not gonna die. I can actually create a world for myself and a voice for myself.\u201d She shaved her head at college to defy what was expected of her (\u201cI never danced better\u201d). At root, The Surge is about \u201cpeeling off layers to find the raw self underneath\u201d.<\/p>\n

Floored genius \u2026 Lisa Race in The Surge: An Ode to Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Connor. Photograph: Joseph DiGiovanna<\/p>\n

I watch a run-through on Zoom from London. The dancers in a studio in New York get a pep talk from Tayeh before they start. \u201cLet Sin\u00e9ad hold us in this vessel,\u201d I hear her saying. \u201cNothing to prove, everything to give.\u201d Then the movement comes in waves: rolling, cresting and, yes, surging. The room is set with wooden benches, like church pews, and the 10 women slide and crawl along them, sit contemplatively or disappear between the rows. They play out a ritual of gestures; there\u2019s a real sense of community, congregation; a coven, even.<\/p>\n

When Tayeh put out a casting call for women over 40 who had been inspired by O\u2019Connor, \u201cso many people turned up\u201d, she says, the oldest in her 80s (the final cast have a combined age of 529). \u201cIt was one of the most incredible auditions I\u2019ve ever had. The soul power of that room was just unmatched in any experience.\u201d Even watching via an iPad 3,000 miles away, I get the sense that something special is happening in that studio.<\/p>\n

The soundtrack of O\u2019Connor\u2019s songs \u2013 from Troy and Mandinka to In This Heart and her startlingly beautiful cover of Nirvana\u2019s All Apologies \u2013 range from prayer-like sorrow to gutsy, roaring anger. The dancers rock out. I never thought of O\u2019Connor\u2019s music as particularly danceable, I say to Tayeh. She\u2019s up in arms. \u201cAll those albums, you can just let them play and dance your face off to them!\u201d In the studio, Tayeh would be blaring the music \u201cand we would be screaming and crying and laughing\u201d, she says. \u201cAnd trying to feel sweat on sweat, and trying to get our heartbeats to match.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sometimes, songs would start playing when Tayeh hadn\u2019t pressed play, and she felt the spirit of O\u2019Connor close by. \u201cBeautiful things happened in that space,\u201d says Tayeh. \u201cAnd I\u2019m not going to say it was my iPad. I\u2019m going to say it was a link to her, saying yes to us.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope that she hears the volume in these bodies together,\u201d she continues. \u201cI hope that the buildings we go to perform this work in vibrate loudly, through the clouds, to her heart. Because people love her. And people like me needed her.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Surge: An Ode to Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Connor<\/a> is at Aviva Studios, Manchester, 25 to 27 June.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sonya Tayeh remembers watching Saturday Night Live in October 1992, at home in Detroit, when a young, shaven-headed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501054,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,85,46,409],"class_list":["post-501053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}