DANCER from the DANCE 2021
THURSDAY 8 JULY - Schedule of Events
Cunningham Class / Ty Boomershine
10h IST / 111h CET / 5h EST
Live Zoom contemporary Cunningham-based Masterclass. Open to professional level dancers and advanced level participants
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Forsythe Workshop / Elizabeth Corbett
16h IST / 17h CET / 11h EST
Live Zoom Workshop: William Forsythe Improvisation Technologies and Phrase Modification with Elizabeth Corbett. Open to professional level dancers and advanced level participants.
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Tilt by Tara Brandel / Croi Glan Integrated Dance Company (45 min)
18h IST / 19h CET / 13h EST
Choreography: Tara Brandel
Dancers: Tara Brandel, Oran Leong, Nicholas Nwosu, Tatiana Turner, Niall O’Carroll
Composer: Niall O’Carroll
Filmmaker/Editor: Luca Truffarelli
Aerial Design: Barnaby Munn
Aerial Production Management: Shaena Brandel
Rigger: Tony Mahon
An aerial dance theatre show performed by a multi-talented, international cast of five diverse performers. Tilt is an exhilarating, boundary-pushing, tender and triumphant attempt to keep some kind of balance in a desperately unstable world. Offering thrills, spills and humour, the production reflects on our longing for intimacy and human connection through all our diversity and our troubling times.
Conceived as an idea in 2019, and made even more relevant by the current global situation, the show centres around a very versatile pole that flies, falls and circles, as a metaphor for instability and change.
Tara Brandel is a contemporary dancer and choreographer originally from West Cork, Ireland. She trained at the Laban Center in London, and has been choreographing extensively since 1990. Most recently Tara has toured her latest solo Circus to San Francisco International Arts Festival, Seattle International Dance Festival, Cork Midsummer Festival, Dublin Fringe Festival and FRESH, San Francisco. Tara co-founded Croi Glan in 2004.
GATHERING 4: Screen Dance
19:30h IST / 20:30h CET / 14:30h EST
FOLLOWED BY LIVESTREAMED TALKBACK moderated by Mark O'Brien, Executive / Co-Director of the Abbey Theatre, at approximately 20h30 IST / 21h30 CET / 15h30 EST
Orla McCarthy
MIND[e]SCAPE [5:20 mins)
Concept, choreography and performance: Orla McCarthy
Music: SISTIR
Camera: Sam van der Schot
Text: Luke Butt
Running is a meditative form. It brings the subconscious lens into focus. This unconscious economy of (e)motion can focus the mind to find resolve in the agony of reflection, mediate obsessions, or find an ephemeral peace in a kind of vacancy of the immediate. Contemporary notions of mindfulness and mindlessness emphasise how we need weigh these fundamental aspects of the mind against one another. But is there value in the pursuit of compartmentalising these coalescing states, or is it an exercise in futility to view both mindfulness and mindlessness through anything other than the window of the present? What presence or transience of mind dictates to the body? Tension and release in the ligaments of our past behaviours and future selves constrict our ability to live absolutely in just one state of mind, surely?
Orla Mc Carthy grew up in Co. Longford where she began her dance training in Shawbrook. She pursued a BA in contemporary dance in Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts. In 2015, Orla began working as a freelance dance artist based between Germany and the Netherlands. During this time she worked with choreographers including: Iván Pérez, Jianhui Wang, Mor Shani, Connor Schumacher, Gal Fefferman, Adam Weinert and Luke Murphy. She also performed in interdisciplinary works by theatre directors Michiel de Regt, Grzegorz Bral (Song of the Goat Theatre) and Liliane Brakema. In 2018 Orla co-created the multidisciplinary dance project “PERSON A” with Max Makowski. They presented their work in Dock11, Berlin and VonHotz SommerBox, Luzern. Since September of 2018, Orla has been working with Dance Theatre Heidelberg in Germany under the direction of Iván Pérez. Along with performing in the ensemble, she continues to create and present her own work.
Fearghus Ó Conchúir
CLIABH (6:30 mins)
Sound Design and Music: Alma Kelliher
Filming and Editing: Fionn O’Toole
Made with support from Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Culture Ireland.
Created from the physical solitude of 2020, Cliabh draws on and sends out lines of connection to a community around the world. That imagined connection becomes physical through the performance, filmed here in the courtyard of the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris.
Frequently collaborating with experts from across and beyond the arts, Fearghus Ó Conchúir has made film and live performances as frameworks for audiences and artists to build communities together. He’s currently co-leading a dance programme with Micro Rainbow International that he initiated as part of The Casement Project (2016) to support LGBT refugees and asylum seekers.
Ríonach Ní Néill / Ciotóg
I MODH RÚIN (IN SECRET) (11:24 mins)
Rinceoirí | Dancers: Sibéal Davitt, Ciara Nic Éinrí, Emma Fitzgerald, Úna Ní Fhlatharta
Ceoltóir | Musician: Máire Nic Fhinn
Agallaimh le | Interviewees: Máire Uí Fhlatharta, Proinsias Uí Ógartaigh, Emma Verling, Máire Nic Fhinn
Scannánaíocht, eagarthóireacht, dearadh fuaime | Cinematography, editing, sound design: Luca Truffarelli
Fuaim | Sound: José Jimenez and Francesco Taurisano
Coimisiúnaithe ag | commissioned by Oireachtas na Gaeilge, le urraíocht ón | with funding from Community Foundation for Ireland
Winner Best Irish Short Film, Wexford Documentary Film Festival 2020
“Má tá grá agat do rud, is féidir gach rud a dhéanamh, i ndáiríre.” (Emma Verling). Cad a spreag mná, atá idir 60 agus 90 bliain d’aois anois, a ngasúir a thógáil le Gaeilge taobh amuigh den Ghaeltacht siar sna 1960aidí, 70aidí agus 80aidí? Céard iad na dúshláin a bhí rompu, agus céard iad a dtuairimí ar a bhaineadar amach? Sa ghearrscannán I Modh Rúin, a nascann ceol, agallaimh agus damhsa, cíorann an cóiréagrafaí Ríonach Ní Néill scéal cúigear ban a ghlac orthu féin teanga agus cultúr na nGael a sheachadadh don chéad ghlúin eile ar bhealach thar a bheith pearsanta.
"If you love something, you can do anything" - Emma Verling.
What would compel you to go against the status quo and bring up your family as Irish speakers in English-speaking Ireland of the 1950s to 1980s? In I Modh Rúin (In Secret), Ríonach Ní Néill blends film, dance, interviews and music to tell the story of five women who did just that.
Ríonach Ní Néill is a dance artist and curator of Galway Dance Days | Corp Real International Dance Festival and Symposium. As a performer, Ríonach has danced for many Irish choreographers including Finola Cronin, Fearghus Ó Conchúir and Rex Levitates (now Liz Roche Dance), and was a long-time member of Tanztheater Bremen under the artistic direction of Urs Dietrich. She founded Ciotóg in 2006, for which she has choreographed 11 works that have been performed across the US, UK, Europe and Ireland, winning international awards. Ríonach has developed dance programmes for older people, in both Irish and English, including the Macushla Dance Club in Dublin and Ar mo sheanléim in the Connemara Gaeltacht.
Croí Glan Integrated Dance Company
ARMOUR OFF (14:29 mins)
Choreography: Linda Fearon in collaboration with Caroline Bowditch
Directed by: Anna Rodgers
Produced by: Zlata Filipovic
Dancer: Linda Fearon
Composer: Niall Caroll
Armour Off is a dance film commissioned by Croí Glan Integrated Dance Company. It captures a performance by dancer Linda Fearon who in lieu of presenting a cancelled live performance was instead filmed at her home in Co. Armagh, Ireland, at the height of lockdown 2020. The film interweaves movement and spoken word written by Linda, exploring her relationship with her body and self throughout her life.
Performance artist and choreographer Caroline Bowditch is a performer, maker, teacher, speaker. She has choreographed/performed work as girl jonah with Fiona Wright; created a number of her own works; and co-created work as Scottish Dance Theatre’s Dance Agent for Change (2008-2012).
Linda Fearon has worked with Croí Glan since 2014. She is also a dancer with Luminous Soul Dance Project and has danced with companies including Candoco Dance, Blue Eyed Soul, Maiden Voyage Dance, Echo Echo Dance and Pony Dance.
Chris Yon and Taryn Griggs in collaboration with Steve Morrison
Re: spectre(s) (4 mins)
Concept and Direction by Chris Yon/Taryn Griggs/Steve Morrison
Filmed, edited, and animated by Steve Morrison
Sound by Chris Yon and Steve Morrison
Re: spectre(s), a dance film choreographed by Chris Yon and Taryn Griggs; and shot, edited and animated by Steve Morrison, resides in a dynamic of living simultaneously in a physical world and a virtual environment. This rift generates a productive confusion, navigating the virtual jumbles of our senses of identity, place, experience, and existence. The process of creating Re: spectre(s) was informed by stories of mysterious disappearances, unexplained phenomena, and the speculative choreography of off-screen action in archived security footage. Chris and Taryn’s choreography, which resonates on a quiet hum oscillating between contrapuntal idiosyncratic gestures and coordinated spooky actions, is enveloped by Steve Morrison’s ethereal, dislocated, animated world where Chris and Taryn appear to contend with spectres and disappear into an astral plane.
Chris Yon and Taryn Griggs create original dance works that are deadpan slapstick, understated melodrama, autobiographical science fiction, cubist vaudeville, asymmetrically consonant explorations of magic and virtuosity in everyday movement.
Steve Morrison’s art uses paint, animation, digital processes, and sculpture to enact a tragicomic theater of impermanence.
Chris, Taryn, and Steve are based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA.
Ingrid Nachstern / Night Star Dance Company
SHOE HORN/OFFICE (10 mins)
Director and Scriptwriter: Ingrid Nachstern
Cinematographer and Editor: Luca Truffarelli
Dancers: Michael Cooney, Millie Daniel-Dempsey, Molly Keane, Ingrid Nachstern, Donking Rongavilla
NOTICE: The aftermath of a rape scene is seen. Also a raw chicken is used suggestively.
“My work deals with topics that need attention drawn to them. In my three films, I have referred to such topics as the Iraq war, celebrity culture, child beauty pageants, sexism, pornography, immigration, toxic masculinity, rape, abuse of natural resources.”
This film deals with sexism in the office and also with the restrictive nature of women’s clothing throughout the ages.
Ingrid is the Artistic Director of Night Star Dance Company. She has created 15 works for it and three Experimental/Screendance films. The latter have been screened internationally and won 30 international awards. Nachstern has performed in New York (for Steve Paxton in MoMA, for Buglisi Dance Theater at Lincoln Center, her own solo at DTW), Barcelona (La Caldera, El Graner), Buenos Aires (Centro Cultural Borges). She is represented by agencesilver models in Paris and SOS models in London.
Oona Doherty and Luca Truffarelli
THE DEVIL (4:53 mins)
Cast: Oona Doherty, Rosie Mullen
Rope Artist: Siobhán Barbour
Filmed by: Luca Truffarelli
Commissioned by Irish Arts Center as part of Grásta: Grace in Uncertainty, 2020-2021.
NOTICE: For mature audiences only. Contains some graphic violence and nudity.
“It was the middle of winter and lockdown. All shows cancelled. Rachael from Irish Arts Center rang me. She just said:
‘Do ya wanna make a dance film?’
I was like, ‘Ah Rachael, I’m pregnant!’
She said ‘Cool make a pregnant dance film?’
I was like, ‘Hmmmmm, ok!’
I thought what I really didn’t want to do was film myself in a room moving smoothly and slowly with a big belly. Jesus we know we've all seen that before. The last thing lockdown needed was another solo dancer moving softly through their house. So me and Luca tried to think how to film what was coming next for us.
A transition film.
Moving from old Oona, old shows, into the new era.
My next show is violent and big and cruel: Navy Blue 2022.
So that's what we did, we filmed the birth of a villain.
We’re living in brutal times lads, I’m adapting said the beast.”
Oona Doherty is a dance artist and choreographer based in Northern Ireland. She has been performing dance theatre internationally since 2010 with companies such as TRASH (NL), Abbattoir Ferme (BE), Veronika Riz (IT), Emma Martin /United Fall (IE) and Enda Walsh (IE). Oona’s choreography has toured extensively to critical acclaim: Hope Hunt & the Ascension into Lazarus, Hard to be Soft - A Belfast Prayer and Lady Magma. Doherty is the Dublin Dance Festival Artist in Residence 2021-2023. She has been awarded the 2021 Venice Biennale Silver Lion Dance Award and she is one of the seven chosen artists of the European Big Pulse Award.
Luca Truffarelli is a freelance photographer and video maker based in Dublin. He graduated in photography in 2011 and started experimenting and challenging himself in the field of visual arts. Over the past few years he has been involved in contemporary dance and theatre works as a photographer/video maker, visual/set designer and artistic collaborator.