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Spreading her wings: Michael Keegan-Dolan’s adaptation of
“Swan Lake,” coming to the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Oct.
15, combines the original story with an Irish folktale and a tragic
event in recent Irish history. Marie Laure Briane
Feather weight
Irish adaptation of ‘Swan Lake’ lands at BAM
A By Rose Adams strange, serious new show is
taking wing.
White-feathered figures, evil
priests, and corrupt cops will leap onto
the stage when an avant-garde adaptation
of Tchaikovsky’s classic ballet “Swan
Lake” debuts at the Brooklyn Academy of
Music’s Harvey Theater on Oct. 15. The
production, from Irish dance company
Teac Damsa, fuses the ballet’s haunting
story with Irish folklore and recent events
in that country, making its mythical story
feel compelling to modern audiences,
said its creator.
“By mixing three stories or myths
together… we can see a connection
between what we perceive as ancient,
and mythological and what we perceive
as contemporary and real,” said Irish
choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan.
“Swan Lake/Loch na hEala,” which
runs Oct. 15–20, re-imagines the ballet’s
original love story between a prince and
a woman turned into a swan by an evil
sorcerer. It reinvents the prince as a
depressed 36-year-old, based on a man
shot to death by Irish police in 2000, and
the sorcerer as a sexually abusive priest
who transforms his victims into swans so
they cannot accuse him. The leading lady
is one of those silenced swans, and shares
a name with the lead character in “The
Children of Lir,” an ancient fairy tale
about four siblings who turn into birds.
The show draws on prevalent themes
in modern Ireland, including oppression,
state power, and corruption of the church,
said Keegan-Dolan, and even its narrative
style has Irish influences.
“The show is built around a narrative
structure, a structure that I would have
inherited from my ancestors, who were
also storytellers,” he said. “The Irish are a
people who have always valued stories, as
ways of passing on valuable information
from young to old.”
The show’s 10 dancers will combine
classic ballet moves with modern dance,
and the show discards Tchaikovsky’s
score for traditional Irish and Nordic
music, played on fiddles, cellos, and
guitars by the music trio Slow Moving
Clouds.
The show may draw on the history and
folklore of Ireland, but its characters will
resonate with people across borders and
eras, said Keegan-Dolan.
“Every society, ancient or modern,
has its evil sorcerers — some of them
politicians or religious leaders,” he
said. “As with any powerful myth,
the characters speak to us today as
strongly as the day of their origin.
We simply need to learn how to listen
again.”
“Swan Lake/Loch na hEala” at BAM
Harvey Theater 651 Fulton St. between
Rockwell and Ashland places in Fort
Greene, (718) 636–4100, www.bam.org.
Oct. 15–19 at 7:30 pm; Oct. 20 at 3 pm.
$30 –$95.
Your entertainment
guide Page 39
Police Blotter ..........................8
Wellness .................................. 31
Opinion ...................................36
Letters .................................... 37
Standing O ............................38
HOW TO REACH US
COURIER L 2 IFE, OCT. 4-10, 2019
DUNG-BELIEVABLE!
Gowanus storm sewers fl ush dog poop into canal
Reporter Kevin Duggan collects a sample of the Gowanus Canal, where environmental planner Eymund Diegel discovered that dog poop washing off
the street during rainfall still pollutes the putrid waterway. Photo by Trey Pentecost
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
A new drainage system
meant to keep sewage from
fl owing into the Gowanus Canal
is being circumvented — by
dog poop!
That’s right, crap may not be
fl ushing in the fetid waterway
from pipes below, but stormwater
is causing turds planted
by man’s best friend to trickle
down from the streets above,
according to a local environmental
watchdog.
“Basically dogs are the problem
— and I’m not saying anything
anti-dog, but we have to be
realistic,” said Eymund Diegel,
a member of the Gowanus Community
Advisory Group, which
keeps an eye on the $1.2 billion
federal Superfund cleanup of
the fi lthy waterway.
The Department of Environmental
Protection installed
new storm sewers in April to
prevent sewage from being
dumped into the canal during
rainstorms, but water samples
taken from the canal by the
Carroll Street Bridge showed
high levels of microscopic poop
following three storms last
spring, according to Diegel.
The probes contained more
than 24,000 colonies of Enterococcus
bacteria — a pathogen
found in human and animal intestines
— per 100 milliliters in
late May and mid-June, which
compares to other samples
taken from Prospect Park Lake
where dogs abound, leading Diegel
to conclude that the nabe’s
pooches are behind the spike.
“It’s essentially being
treated as a toilet,” said Diegel.
“It fl ushes away the poo.”
A rep for the Environmental
Protection Agency was at
a loss for words upon hearing
Diegel’s astonishing revelation
at a Gowanus Community Advisory
Group meeting on Sept.
24.
“That is surprising,” said
Christos Tsiamis, the agency’s
Gowanus Superfund project
manager.
The Gowanusaur has taken
weekly probes of the area for
about fi ve years and sends them
to a lab in Manhattan, where
citizen testers log water qualities
across the Five Boroughs
for New York City Water Trail
Association, a non-profi t environmental
group.
This reporter joined the scientist
during a morning sample
session on Sept. 26, gritting
my teeth and plugging my nose
as I ventured down the canal
aboard Diegel’s canoe.
The Gowanus Canal may
have a bad reputation, but paddling
down the canal’s placid,
oily surface to the Carroll Street
Bridge was actually kind of
nice. Sadly, taking a sample required
me to plunge my hands
into its skeevy depths — known
to harbor sewage, toxic waste,
and even trace amounts of the
clap — but, so far, no rash!
Fortunate for me, Brooklyn
hadn’t seen any rain in the last
few days, making it unlikely
that any serious dog poop had
found its way into canal recently,
and the odor was only
pretty bad.
The feds plan to carve out
the dirt from the First Street
Basin, one block south of the
outfl ows, and turn the inlet into
wetlands as part of the cleanup,
and Diegel said the city should
reroute the poop water there,
where plant life would fi lter out
the crap before it trickles into
the canal.
“We would have room to put
it in the constructed wetlands
and fi lter basins, which we’re
doing anyway,” he said.
A spokesman for the feds
said the agency would push the
city to remedy the situation in
order to make sure separated
sewers keep the canal clean,
but declined to comment on
whether they would divert the
runoff to the First Street Basin.
“EPA intends to convey this
information to the New York
City Department of Environmental
Protection and ask them
to review this matter to ensure
that the new infrastructure
functions as designed,” said
Elias Rodriguez in an emailed
statement.
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