‘I hope they can hear us through the clouds’: dance music tribute to Sinéad O’Connor | Dancing

Sonya Tayeh remembers watching Saturday Night Live in October 1992, at home in Detroit, when a young, shaved woman behind a microphone tore a portrait of Pope John Paul II into pieces, while saying: “Fight the real enemy.”

“I felt like the whole world stopped,” remembers Tayeh, still amazed by Sinéad O’Connor’s protests against abuse in the Catholic Church, and mocking “the eyes that keep looking at your life and burning… It was like I felt the world shake under my feet. I was defeated,” she says, in our video from New York. I see Tayeh has one side of her head shaved – a long veil of black hair sweeping the other side.

It was a difficult time for the young Tayeh, but especially for O’Connor, as their backsliding derailed his rising career. Some say it was deliberate self-destruction by an artist who didn’t want to be a pop star. (Later O’Connor said in his books, Memories: “I’m a protest singer. I had things to get off my chest. I didn’t want to be famous.”)

The life of the singer from Dublin would seem far removed from the Lebanese-Palestinian girl who grew up in a Muslim family, immersed at that time in the secretive environment of Detroit. But O’Connor’s spirit spoke to Tayeh: “I’m the kid who shaved his head and shaved his armpit hair, and I was like, ‘Fight the real enemy!'”

After O’Connor’s death in July 2023, there was a huge tribute to the woman who suffered from mental illness and was often insulted and ridiculed throughout her life. “After all, you’re going to give all this grace to the person you beat?” says Tayeh, who was then an award-winning artist. “When Sinéad died, I was really heartbroken about it. I painted my room, talking out loud about her writings, covered in grief and thinking about how the world had rejected her.

Tayeh was in talks with the Joyce Theater in New York about making a new musical, but he couldn’t find the right idea. Suddenly, listening to O’Connor’s song for Troy the other day, it clicked. “I had this vivid vision of women only, sweating in line.” She called her producer and said: “I’ve got it! It’s a piece of Sinéad O’Connor’s music, with over 40 women. And he was like: ‘Fuck yeah.’

O’Connor was 56 when he died and was still singing – he was close to finishing a new album. Being a middle-aged woman in the music industry is rare, but dancing is no different, says Tayeh. At 49 years old, he always asks himself: where are the dancers his age? Are the artists talking about their lives, their bodies and their experiences growing up?

So this was the beginning of The Surge – the title refers to the surge of energy, “a big wake, a noise, a kick” – which is the world premiere in Manchester. At first, Tayeh didn’t know what the job would be like. “I said: ‘I don’t have a piece. I don’t have a company here, but I have a wonderful, heartbreaking, heartwarming experience. So let’s start there.’

It may seem like an unexpected choice for Tayeh, as she is known for her Tony-winning musical performances in the musical Moulin Rouge! – the red velvet and added glitz of the most expensive pop music still played around the world (currently on UK tour). But his work covers all aspects of music and dance culture: he started dancing in Detroit clubs in the 90s, then worked with pop stars (Miley Cyrus, Kylie, Florence + the Machine) and respected groups such as the Martha Graham Dance Company. Recently, Tayeh filmed a version of Girl Troubled in New York, and directed and recorded the new song for Black Swan.

The Surge is definitely one of Tayeh’s creations. He tells me he’s listened to the audiobook of O’Connor’s memoir — narrated by the singer himself — 10 times.

It is a very difficult story: O’Connor was abused by her mother, and she describes the violent and abusive treatment, being locked in her room and in the garden for hours. It was a chaotic family life, but at the age of 15, O’Connor was sent to a boarding school for prostitutes, adjacent to the former Magdalene laundries. It was a nun there who bought O’Connor a guitar. His early songs of anger and confusion gave way to his later songs of healing and forgiveness, and he constantly explored spirituality, from his Catholic roots to Rastafarianism to his conversion to Islam.

Tayeh talks about O’Connor’s spirituality and her questions about the religion she grew up with. Although it was more than that; The singer’s “want to be heard,” he said, was “related to a very difficult childhood experience. Tayeh was abused when she was young. She said: “People were very bullied. He explains that “putting your hand on your head to protect yourself as you walk down the hallways creates a foundation of fear and anger.”

Hearing O’Connor’s music gave Tayeh hope. “I was like, well, I’m not going to die. I can make my own world and my own voice.” He shaved his head in college to defy expectations (“I never danced well”). At its core, The Surge is about “removing layers to find what’s underneath”.

I’m watching on Zoom from London. Dancers in a studio in New York receive a news from Tayeh before they start. “Sinéad let us get on this ship,” I heard her say. “Nothing to prove, everything to give.” Then the movement comes in waves: rolling, rocking and, yes, running. The room is lined with wooden benches, like church pews, and 10 women slide and crawl along, sitting thoughtfully or disappearing between the rows. They play a hand ritual; there is a real sense of community, congregation; agreement, though.

When Tayeh invited over 40 women who were inspired by O’Connor, “a lot of people came”, she says, the oldest in her 80s (the last one was 529 years old). “It was one of the most amazing roles I’ve ever been in. The energy in that room was unmatched.” Even looking through an iPad 3,000 miles away, I can feel that something special is happening in the studio.

The sound of O’Connor’s music – from Troy and Mandinka to In This Heart and her stunningly beautiful cover of Nirvana’s All Apologies – ranges from prayer-like sadness to angry, roaring. The dancers are swaying. I never thought of O’Connor’s music as particularly danceable, I say to Tayeh. He is upstairs. “All these albums, you can leave them playing and dance your face off to them!” In the studio, Tayeh plays music “and we’re screaming, crying and laughing,” she says. “I’m trying to feel the sweat on the sweat, I’m trying to get our hearts together.”

Sometimes, the music starts playing before Tayeh starts to sing, and she hears O’Connor’s ghost nearby. Tayeh said: “That’s when the best things happened. “And I won’t say it was my iPad, I’ll say it was a link to him, to say yes to us.

“I hope they hear the sound of these bodies together,” he continues. I believe that the buildings where we are going to do this work will shake a lot in the clouds until it reaches the heart because people love him and people like me wanted him.”

The Surge: An Ode to Sinéad O’Connor and to Aviva Studios, Manchester, 25 to 27 June.