Ireland’s CoisCéim Dance Theatre is in Australia with a playful, contemporary reimagining of Peter and the Wolf.

Like many of us, David Bolger was introduced to Sergei Prokofiev’s “symphonic fairy tale for children” Peter and the Wolf at primary school, and remembers being fascinated by the composition, written to introduce children to the different instruments of the orchestra.

Bolger is now Artistic Director of CoisCéim Dance Theatre, an award-winning Irish company which he co-founded in 1995. CoisCéim – an Irish word for “footstep”, pronounced “Kush Came” – is currently in Australia with a production for children called The Wolf and Peter. As the title suggests, the show is a response to Prokofiev’s tale but turns it on its head, telling it from the perspective of the wolf.

Mateusz Szczerek as the Wolf in The Wolf and Peter. Photograph @ Ros Kavanagh

Directed and choreographed by Bolger, The Wolf and Peter premiered in Ireland in 2015 to five star reviews, with The Irish Times describing it as “reassuringly traditional and startlingly modern…. funny, imaginative, and finally, very moving.”

“The way Prokofiev wrote it was that each character had an instrument of the orchestra...