Hectic romp

Michael Keegan-Dolan is to dance–theatre what radical and elusive Banksy is to the visual arts. Indeed, these two acclaimed bad boys of modern-day culture have a great deal in common; both derive their art from cruel satire of the everyday, which they portray with similar irreverent and shock-provoking strokes, in spite of their different means of expression. Both indulge in challenging the tenets of existing culture by tackling — some would say ‘desecrating’ — revered monoliths of the art world. And, in formulating their scorching critiques of the surrounding reality, they both resort to a kaleidoscopic pastiche which defies any classification.

Banksy’s live rats crawling around the improvised gallery in Westbourne Grove and his more recent non-Christmassy Santa’s Ghetto in Oxford Street have had the same impact as Keegan-Dolan’s raunchy revisionist reading of the romantic ballet classic Giselle, or his unique take on Romeo and Juliet in the recently acclaimed The Flowerbed.