Five reasons to see… Swimming with my Mother

1. It is a true story. The performance features Artistic Director David Bolger and his mother Madge Bolger who, throughout the performance, tell their stories about growing up with swimming and dancing being part of their everyday lives.

2. The performance is heart-warming. The staging of the show is told with honesty and simplicity which will gently disarm the viewer, as the performers swim through the words and emotions of growing up by the sea on Dublin bay.

3. Superb dancing. The choreography and movement vocabulary used in the production was specially created by choreographer Bolger, combining elements of rhythmical swimming technique and big band dances, which fuse together to create a unique style of contemporary dance.

4. You get a movie too. After each performance there is a special screening of the award winning short dance film Deep End Dance, which features the two performers dancing underwater in the very same swimming pool which Madge taught David to swim before he could talk.

5. It’s got heart. The performance has been described as “sensitive without resorting to sentimentality” and, staged with ingenious simplicity, Bolger’s Swimming With My Mother is a lovely depiction of a parent-child bond that was forged in the water.

Swimming with my Mother by CoisCéim Dance Theatre appears at the Pavilion Theatre, New Road, Brighton on 16 May at 6.30pm and 17 – 18 May at 6.00pm.