Saturday November 13, 2010 Brocquy’s that she ever saw were his white faces and ancestral heads. “I found them deeply inspiring,” she says. DANCING ABOUT ART “I had only just come to Ireland and they made me feel more at home here, I related very much to his way of INTERVIEW: looking at the world. Morleigh Steinberg has devised a dance homage to Louis “Having got to know Louis I asked him had he ever seen le Brocquy. Róisín Ingle met her at a break in rehearsals his paintings danced. He didn’t say yes, he didn’t say no, he said ‘that’s such a good idea’ so I took it upon myself HALFWAY THROUGH INTERVIEWING dancer to do it. There is a lot of movement and energy in his Morleigh Steinberg, a U2 song comes on the stereo, a paintings so it felt very natural and a lot of fun.” barely audible elephant in the back room of the Dún Laoghaire pub where we meet to discuss her latest The paintings reminded her of the dancing style of her co- project, a dance interpretation of Louis le Brocquy’s choreographer Oguri – a Japanese dancer who is married paintings. When I point out the musical “coincidence”, to her sister Roxanne (also a dancer) – and of the work dark haired, dark eyed Steinberg, who also happens to be they do together. “We dancers are very incestuous,” she Mrs The Edge of U2, doesn’t miss a beat. “Yes, I heard laughs at one point. “Louis wasn’t just painting the face, that when it came on,” she says in her soft voice. Of he was painting what was coming from the inside out and course she did. You imagine that it’s no longer much of a what we do as dancers is more about that too,” she says. novel marital hazard for U2 songs to find their way on to She met Oguri through her sister who studied alongside the stereo when she or her husband venture out for him in Japan. Her first feature length documentary Height business or pleasure. of Sky was about her brother-in-law’s quest to rediscover Steinberg, a beautiful women with creamy skin who looks his relationship with dance in the Californian deserts. He younger than her 40-something years, has taken a break also dances in the le Brocquy piece. As with much of her from rehearsals in a nearby dance studio. There, dancers work, she says, “it’s a family affair”. including Liz Roche from acclaimed modern dance troupe Cold Dream Colour is having its premiere in the Pavilion Rex Levitates are warming up, contorting limbs into Theatre in Dún Laoghaire, the same week that le Brocquy elegant poses in preparation for the world premiere of turns 94. The first show was last night and the second is Cold Dance Colour – A Dance Homage to Louis le this evening. “I’m not sure if he can come. I would Brocquy . A grafter, and multi-tasker extraordinaire, actually just perform it just for him and for his wife Ann Steinberg is artistic director, co-choreographer, lighting and their friends,” she says. Her husband, also known as designer and soloist for the piece. The first works of le Dave Evans, has composed the music with Paul Chavez. 1 “He knew how to go naturally, I think, it was just a matter of him seeing that he didn’t have to make a song out of ISO spent their formative years collaborating and creating it,” she says. The costumes are by family friend, writer their own work, starring in music videos and feature and fashion designer Mariad Whisker. films, as well as touring their own live shows. One of the Dance, Steinberg says, has been her life. As a young child videos they starred in was U2’s With or Without You . She growing up in Los Angeles, the daughter of a lawyer and first met the band and struck up a friendship with Bono an interior designer, she was tutored by a “wonderful” backstage after one of the gigs on the Joshua Tree tour. teacher in modern dance. “My mother found this teacher Does she remember the first time she met Edge? Were and we all danced with her, my sister, my mother, a there fireworks? “Yes, I remember, but no, there were no station wagon of my school friends . It was dancing fireworks,” she says. She became Bono’s movement without mirrors, so it wasn’t about looking like everyone coach for the Zoo TV tour. “One day he just said, ‘why else. There was technique but not having a mirror you don’t you dance, you are there watching every night’,” learned to express yourself, like when you are a child you she remembers, so she took over the belly dancer part in are not worried about what you look like, no, it’s about Mysterious Ways even though she wasn’t a bellydancer. what do you feel like.” “I’m a dancer, I watch, I keep my eyes open,” she says. A “second generation Los Angeleno”, she had something Her romance with Edge, who had separated from his first of a privileged background, attending Beverley Hills High wife, took off at the end of the tour. “I always think it – “a really great school with fantastic music and dance took us a long time to find each other,” she muses. She facilities which is why my mother sent us there” – and was never phased by making friends and finding romance grew up around famous Hollywood neighbours. within the world’s biggest rock group. “I grew up in Hollywood, remember,” she says. Her grandmother, an Austrian born in New York, was secretary to the head of Universal Pictures and her South Moving to Ireland was the next natural step, but as a rover African grandfather was a camera man in the city. “So it’s dancer it only felt permanent when the couple had their in the blood, Hollywood. My mother grew up on the two children, daughter and son Sian and Levi. The couple Universal lot,” she says. “But LA is much more than that, have homes in Dublin, New York, France and LA. “I part of it is this very large hick town, it’s also very multi- came to Ireland with a suitcase, it never really felt as cultural and then there is Hollywood. But most of the though I moved all my stuff here. I still kept my place in people who work in the industry are technicians, there are LA, I still have it. It wasn’t until I had children that I felt more of them than famous actors. I love it that people ‘well, now I am here’.” went west to have a dream,” she says. How did she adjust to life in Ireland? “Honestly? It was She is unashamedly enthusiastic about her hometown hard. Coming from a multi-cultural international city like even though dancing has provided her with something of Los Angeles it was hard to suddenly be in a culture I had a gypsy life, taking her away from the place of her birth no connection with and no roots . at the same time it for long periods since she was a teenager. was wonderful to be in a country that was completely itself. I feel like that about Italy. Although I have watched She was 16 when she went away to study dance at the Ireland change over the years and I can’t help feeling famous Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan and 17 ‘don’t do it, don’t lose the Irishness’.” when she travelled to Paris with her older sister. “I turned 18 in Paris, it was just this crazy year of dancing,” she She is clearly itching to get back to the studio now, remembers. On her way back from the city she was politely answering questions in the pub while her head, invited to join the fledgling Momix dance company, the her heart is back in the studio with Oguri and the other influential Connecticut-based group of “dancer dancers. illusionists”. After several years of touring she left with “I just wanted to bring everybody’s expertise to bear on three other Momix founders to create a dance company this, I want it to be a live event, a real celebration of called ISO. (Given the abstract lingo that surrounds Louis’s work,” she says. She hopes it has legs and that modern dance it’s heartening to discover that the I, S and there will be a demand for the work to go on tour. So far O stand for nothing more esoteric than I’m So her professional life has taken her into lighting, directing, Optimistic.) filmography and photography but she is a dancer before ISO were two couples who at one point romantically all of that. “crossed over” as Steinberg puts it. The dynamic, she “I will never stop moving,” she says as she takes her says, was not unlike a rock group, which is perhaps how leave, a portrait of understated elegance. “As long as I can she has a deep appreciation for her husband’s work. “It’s move I will dance.” not always easy when he is away touring, sometimes you don’t feel like being the one left behind with the children . Cold Dream Colour – A Dance Homage to Louis le . but I really respect his work ethic, as he does mine, and Brocquy is at The Pavilion Theatre, Dún Laoghaire, I love when people are working hard at what they do Dublin tonight.