‘I went from waking up in a city to waking up in a field’ – the Irish dancer who accidentally ran away with the circus

“There were a few times where I’d ask myself: ‘Wait, what am I doing here?’ And you realise you’re doing what someone else might not [want to do], but that you’re going to be OK.”

In Roberson’s new life as an aerial artist and dancer, no two days are the same. This week, he finds himself at the Dublin Fringe Festival as a standout performer in WAKE, the latest high-octane production by Irish theatre mavericks Thisispopbaby.

In a stage extravaganza that is effectively a celebration and examination of the traditional Irish wake, Roberson’s solo number is a revelation, seeing him arrive on stage in full GAA gear and stripping down to reveal a mesh vest and golden hot pants before performing a mix of aerial acrobatics, modern dance and classic Irish dancing.

One outlet described his act as “literally [stripping] away the idea of what masculinity is or should be”. “There’s so much that goes into the act that I’m mainly thinking, ‘hit the beats, don’t fall out of the air’, things like that,” Roberson laughs.

“But then I had an audience responding to the removing of the GAA gear and realising that this wasn’t strictly a striptease. You’re kind of dismantling preconceived notions. And you find yourself, even if you’re not fully attached to that cultural norm, you can still feel the weight of it.”

The tale of how a 29-year-old from Little Rock, Arkansas, found himself travelling with a UK circus is a fairly unorthodox one, and it begins, of all places, with Irish dancing. Growing up in Bill Clinton country, Roberson’s family is only “a little” Irish, and a few generations back at that.

“My mom is a Catholic school teacher, but I didn’t grow up thinking that, you know, Irish culture would become my culture,” Roberson says. “We didn’t go to St Patrick’s Day parades too often and no one had ever done Irish dance. But when I was 10, out of the blue, my Mom said, ‘you’re going to be an Irish dancer’. She told me to try it for a month.”

This would have been around 20 years ago when Riverdance was at the height of its cultural power, especially in the US. Was that a factor at all in her suggestion?

“Funnily enough, I didn’t see Riverdance until I had been Irish dancing for several years,” Roberson says. “My mom grew up pigeon-toed and had to wear corrective shoes as a child. One of the jokes we have is that she signed me up for Irish dance because it would teach me to turn my feet out without having to pay for expensive corrective shoes.

“I wasn’t a great student at the time and I didn’t like reading, but I could remember dance steps and could identify the Irish tunes. It gave me a sense of validation that eventually tied into success in school or success in other sports, and that was really invaluable.”

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Roberson adored Irish dance and competed for almost 14 years, but a rebellious streak stood in his way. He was often more interested in creating new routines and moving more freely than the competitive standards encouraged.

He managed to get disqualified from several feiseanna for adding steps that were not suitable for the style or for doing brush dances at treble reel competitions.

“After a while, my teacher asked if I would be an assistant teacher and she would let me choreograph for the kids, and that was a wonderful outlet for me,” he says.

Of the Irish dancing competition scene in the US, he adds: “It’s very intense, very highly competitive. It still had strong roots in Irish culture and was definitely still considered a very cultural dance.

“In 2010, the dresses went from the dress with the Celtic knotwork to these kind of Victorian designs. It all became more flashy and intense. It went from, ‘hey, we hang out on Wednesdays and learn Irish dance’ to ‘you have a personal trainer and you’re in class every day’.

“What a lot of people loved about Irish dance was the cultural identity, but with this new competitive mindset, it’s slowly becoming less accessible to too many people.”

In 2012, Roberson was considering a move away from Irish dance, but a 10-day event in Ireland — Take The Floor, held in DCU — helped him refocus. The event, created in association with Riverdance, would give rise to a new full-scale production, rehearsed and staged by a cast of over 50 Irish dancers from around the world, directed and produced by former Riverdance members Shane McAvinchey and Paula Goulding.

Suffice to say, Roberson began to fully realise the opportunities Irish dance could bring.

“It just sparked a whole new interest for me,” he says. “Around that time, I was meeting people that were choosing art — they weren’t dancing because their parents put them in dance. They were so much fun to be around and my world just kept expanding from there.”

By 2019, Roberson had gotten wind of a new production, WAKE, that Thisispopbaby was putting together. Realising they needed an Irish dancer, he went to a casting in New York. While auditioning, he came across aerialists, including Aisling Ní Cheallaigh, and fell in love with the skill.

Around this time, Roberson was living in New York choreographing an off-Broadway Irish Dance Christmas show with Brooklyn Irish Dance Company. Moving home to Arkansas from New York during Covid, he trained up in a local aerial studio.

In 2021, he applied for an Irish dance job he thought was in Ireland, but turned out to be for Gifford’s Circus in the UK. It was an unexpected career turn, but a fortuitous one, as he enjoyed months of circus training skills — something that would stand him in good stead when he returned to the Thisispopbaby fold for WAKE.

His appreciation for Irish culture intensified further when Thisispopbaby offered the cast workshops to explain the significance of the Irish wake.

“Guest lecturers came in and talked about the parallels between the Irish wake and dance club culture and other forms of communal grieving,” Roberson says. “It’s been amazing to learn about it all. It’s that sense of community we all tie into.”

In the future, a show of his own is in the works and he will continue his work as a freelance Irish dance choreographer.

“With Thisispopbaby, this is as unique and wild and new as performance has gotten for me,” he says. “If they say, ‘hey we’re going on the road’, I will drop everything and anything and join back up with this group. Aside from that, I have a simple goal of just trying out new kinds of shows and seeing much more of the world.”

Thisispopbaby’s WAKE runs at the National Stadium as part of Dublin Fringe Festival until September 17. See fringefest.com/festival/whats-on/wake.