United Fall

Press

"Emma Martin's Dogs is alternately exquisite and raw, it's bold approaches to choreography and text presenting civility just a thin veneer over pandemonium. "(Irish Times 24/09/2012)

"What Dogs pictures is not humanity turned native, but, more interestingly, humanity made neurotic by the shackles of civilization. Martin marries an astute choreographic eye with the will to realise big concepts. The performance is pitch perfect, dancers and musicians together deftly constructing a pocket of unreality that yet reflects the reality we live in. " (Totally Dublin 14/09/2012)

"Emma Martin's new work illuminates those instincts in humans which draw us closer to the animal kingdom, moments of explosion which transforms emotional lyricism into ferocious anger, a gathering of individuals into a mob, a cultured salon into a pit of rage and back again. Her company of six expressive dancers energetically run the gamut of her language from a phrase of grace and symmetry to the frenzied urging of a street gang, a pack of hounds baying for blood. They kick up a storm, arms and legs flying and flailing, creating their own primal barefoot crescendo, counterpointing Bryan O'Connell's drumming. The musicians and dancers brilliantly parallel one another throughout;  the baroque rhythms of Tom Lane's harpsichord become more discordant while soprano Elizabeth Woods' operatic voice takes to free form jazzy mouth music till finally the strains of Mozart soothe the crumpled, exhausted bodies as they fall to the floor" (Irish Times, 14/09/2012)