Performance photos by Tom Visser from Ireland
Portrait photos by Kate Garner, who also photographed Sinéad O’Connor
The Surge: An Ode to Sinéad O’Connor, commissioned by The Joyce Theater and Factory International, is a magnificent, trend-bucking contemporary dance tribute to the late Irish singer-songwriter Sinéad O’Connor, conceived and directed by Brooklyn-born, Detroit-raised, Tony Award-winning choreographer Sonya Tayeh (who won for Moulin Rouge! The Musical). She intentionally collaborated with a troupe of accomplished women dancers aged 43 to 67 in a field where professional performance careers often end by one’s mid-thirties.
Despite—and, in some ways, because of—O’Connor’s early global success with her first two albums, 1987’s The Lion and the Cobra and 1990’s I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, her fiery passion to be a protest singer rather than a pop star, and to speak uncomfortable truths to powerful institutions including the Catholic Church and the music industry, she became a polarizing celebrity. That celebrity, coupled with her frequently chaotic life (tipping over from a traumatic childhood) overshadowed much of her later work.
Tayeh brings the focus back to O’Connor on her own terms. O’Connor’s stark voice is a spectral presence in the theater whether reciting excerpts from the gripping audio version of her 2021 memoir Rememberings (which I listened to in the wake of her too-early death in July 2023 from COPD-related causes) or singing on her spectacular vocal recordings in a 14-song program drawn from her first four LPs. Many of the songs inhabit the liminal inner world that links the spiritual and physical, with metaphorical flames and ghosts embodied in unforgettable limb movements that underscore the phenomenal musical breadth and resonant emotional range that O’Connor infused into her art. However, her most famous recording, Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U”, is not part of the show. O’Connor retired the song from her concert sets in 2015; Prince’s estate later refused permission to use it in the 2022 documentary Nothing Compares, after she recounted her disturbing encounter with Prince in Rememberings.
The dancers— Alison Clancy (also a Metropolitan Opera dancer and singer-songwriter whose unique shows I have reviewed for The Big Takeover), Amy Miller, Betsy Cooper, Gabby Malone, Jennifer Nugent, Jin Ju Song-Begin, Karine Plantadit, Lisa Race, Monique Smith, and Mor Mendell (some with closely-shorn locks that evoke O’Connor’s signature look)—bring more than 500 years of collective lived experience to the intense kinetics that Tayeh has devised for them. The flurry of coordinated groupings and separations contrasts with the spare, shadow-lit stage design centered on century-old heavy wooden church pews—constantly moved, rearranged, and lifted by the dancers for dramatic effect—which recall both O’Connor’s constant quest for accountability from the Catholic world of her childhood and her strenuous search for new paths of religious devotion later in life.
Among the memorable moments are the combination of multiple dancers “swimming” over the pews while others crawl, hunched, in front of them, animating the title of “I Am Stretched on Your Grave”; the yogic solo by Plantadit followed by Race sliding across an upraised, tilted pew, representing the slippery balance of sublimating earthly desires on “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got”; the sensual embraces on “I Want Your (Hands on Me)”; and the ecstatic dance-party vibe of “Mandinka”, which elicited tears from my eyes during the matinee performance in recognition of the mix of joy and loss I feel when listening to O’Connor’s aural corpus.
The moving finale of “In This Heart”, an a cappella deep cut of grief and redemption from the underrated 1994 LP Universal Mother, was greeted by a well-earned three-minute standing ovation that made me hanker for an encore dance—perhaps set to “Haunted”, O’Connor’s duet with Shane MacGowan that was a 1995 U.K. Top 30 single—as a fitting coda to her ghostly presence throughout.
This sold-out New York City run through September 27 follows a sold-out June 2026 debut weekend in Manchester, England, with planned tours of California and O’Connor’s hometown of Dublin, Ireland. I can also see the production being a hit at music festivals (attention, Daisy Chain Fields and All Things Go).
Overall, The Surge brings a powerful message of celebrating collective human presence, respecting the aging process and its accompanying wisdom, and striving for inchoate beauty and balance in a modern world that often seems out of sorts. Through exquisite choreography and dancer execution, Tayeh expands on themes that O’Connor grappled with throughout her life.
