If you’ve chosen this show because you want to see some uplifting dance by older people sticking two fingers up to the perceived limitations of ageing, be patient. It will come. But there is so much more to this piece from Ireland’s Junk Ensemble, performed by Finola Cronin and Mikel Murfi. First, Cronin and Murfi demonstrate all the other things their bodies are still capable of doing, like creating thoughtful, curious passages of elegy, or playing macabre games that involve acting out different ways to die. 

They start off by exploring each other’s bodies before engaging in a strange, almost beetle-like rutting dance, locking necks and rubbing their faces together even as they push against each other. Later they sit down and swap regrets and memories. In one luminous passage of duet, Cronin is tied to an IV drip stand, while Murfi wheels and birls and supports her. It’s not tragi-comedy, or earnest, or farcical or anything whose tone can be put in a box. It’s just surreal, beautiful and extraordinarily human. 

Cronin is an ex-Pina Bausch company dancer, and she seems to carry the spirit of that iconic choreographer in the texture of her movements, which are always soaked in truth, whether they are ugly or flirtatious, playful, painful or melodramatic. Murfi as counterpart brings wry humour to voiceovers and a world-weary but wise honesty into his dance. Ending on a triumphant note, Dances Like A Bomb’s poetry and strange logic form far more than a celebration of older dancers. This is a piece whose beauty and complexity demonstrate exactly why older artists, whatever their discipline, should never be underestimated.  

Dances Like A Bomb, ZOO Southside, until 27 August, 2.40pm.