HYPERACTIVE at Racconti di Altre Danze
Friday 11 October
Livorno, Italy
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HYPERACTIVE at Espace l'Hermine
Friday 15 November
Sarzeau, Bretagne, France
in their Regard sur Irlande series
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HYPERACTIVE is described by choreographer John Scott (interpreter in Oona Doherty’s Hard To Be Soft) as a high-energy human dance installation for five male dancers, whose backgrounds range from contemporary to Afro Brazilian street dance. It’s vocabulary is somewhere between horse play and dance. Elements include an invisible hand dance, an all-male chorus line, arm wrestling and personal geometry. It is both anti-virtuosic and funny. Originally commissioned by Galway International Arts Festival, HYPERACTIVE has been performed at Dublin Dance Festival , Five Lamps Arts Festival and La MaMa Moves Dance Festival, New York.
“As a writer, I will never keep up with what John Scott's dancers do in HYPERACTIVE …. Scott's sense of funny scrambles over any flimsy barrier. What is an "invisible hand dance?" Don't ask. What does an all-male chorus line and a Mack truck have in common? ……… What might it be like to stop to smell the roses only to have a heard of bison gallop by only inches away? What's the DMZ between exhilarating exuberance and bodily danger? ….. The work embraces transparency and anti-virtuosity in its raucousness, its grin at failure, its refusal to go anywhere near pretty payoff or uplift”
-Eva Yaa Asantewaa/Infinite Body, New York
“It is highly charged, wonderfully high-octane exhibitionistic fun”
-Seona Mac Reamoinn/The Irish Times
NEW 2024 INTERNATIONAL COMMISSIONED ARTIST
ABBY Z & THE NEW UTILITY
Upon receiving the Arts Council Ireland’s 2023 Commission Award, Irish Modern Dance Theatre has commissioned in partnership with Dance Cork Firkin Crane and Dance Ireland, international dance artist, Abby Zbikowski to create a new highly physical work for 6 dancers from varying movement trainings and ethnic backgrounds that currently call Ireland home. Abby Z (Zbikowski) is a Polish-American choreographer who has studied and worked extensively in the Germaine Acogny’s legendry ‘Ecole des Sables’ African Dance Academy in Senegal. Abby Z will be in residence with Irish Modern Dance Theatre throughout 2024.
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This new work will be Abby Z’s latest work on a ten year trajectory of creating highly physical, collaborative dance works that force audiences and dancers to reckon with the collision of cultures that vibrate throughout the practice of dance in this contemporary moment, and manifest a path towards equity that supports the necessary evolution of the world via the practice of dance. Throughout the process of creation Abby Z physically challenges assumed conventions of form and work towards re-imagining known outcomes as a way to challenge the systems we cling to for understanding.
We are happy to be a part of The Arts Council 'Show Up' campaign 2024. The Arts Council campaign targets young people ages 18-25 to increase attendance, attitudinally, and feel that art experience or space is for them. For more information go to The Arts Councils Page.