Bloodlines

Bloodlines is a performance/installation based on the idea of Sand Mandalas: a Tibetan Buddhist tradition involving the creation and destruction of mandalas made of coloured sand. It is the creation of a beautiful dance work using memory and personal history.

John Scott has been working with asylum

seekers and refugees since 2003, mostly

through SPIRASI's asylum services. In the course of this work, Scott and the participants created powerful and resonant dance and film works, using fragments of personal stories.

“As migrants we leave home in search of a future, but we lose the past” - Kiribu from SPIRASI dance workshops

The cast of Bloodlines on Rohingya Rememberance Day in August 2019 at VISUAL, Carlow.

Photo: Nick Bradshaw, The Irish Times

Irish Modern Dance Theatre created Bloodlines as a performative installation, as a purifying dance work using memory and personal history, to give dignity and agency to the displaced people now living in Ireland. To inspire and educate the public, to celebrate diversity and inclusivity. To facilitate a meeting of cultures, to reflect all people living in Irish society, to support the evolution of a future Irish identity beyond the existing, received notion of Irishness.

Concept and Choreography: John Scott