Dance Ireland Residency Recipients 2024

Dance Ireland Residency Recipients 2024

Dance Ireland is pleased to announce the recipients of the Autumn/Winter Dance Ireland Residency awards 2024. 


The Dance Ireland Residency programme supports dance artists to explore and discover new ideas, relationships, and processes in their work. We are delighted that, for the first time, we can offer fully resourced residencies - including financial support - investing in artists at all stages of their career. We are grateful for the Arts Council’s continued support that allows us to deliver these important opportunities for artists.  

Following an open call, we are pleased to announce the recipients of Dance Ireland Residencies for Autumn/Winter 2024 and look forward to welcoming them to DanceHouse over the coming months.
 

 

Emily Aoibheann

How can pure symbiosis between interior and exterior worlds be achieved?
What conflict will inevitably ensue?
Drawing inspiration from the work of Daphne Du Maurier, Emily Aoibheann explores performance design and the creative personality combining dance with objects. Rolls of 1960s vintage wallpaper; a deck of tarot cards; 20 yards of baby-pink aerial fabric; peach ribbon; a wall with holes in it; two microphones and a series of pedestrian and highly stylised dances feature in this humorous, richly visual, material experiment.

 

Justine Doswell

Drawing on the mythology of Mnemosyne, Greek goddess of memory, mother of the nine muses and guardian of the oral tradition, Justine will use this funded Dance Ireland residency to continue to explore the process of remembering and the act of forgetting. Progressing the work undertaken this year in residence at UCD's Creative Futures Academy's Trapdoor, Justine intends to take this valuable opportunity to further develop elements of the research.

 

Luke Feeney

For this residency opportunity, the dancer will research the solid foundations for a new dance performance concept “The Animated Identity” based on the idea of a character inhabiting a virtual “cyber” world. The dancer will seek to create a unique and innovative depiction of the relationship that people have with online media and the “cyber” environment and how it effects and influences the way people view the real world. This concept will bring digital profiles and online interactions to life, making the virtual world into a real and emotional experience. The dancer will explore the difficulties of identity in the modern era and use the residency to critically research his craft of animation and explore different dance techniques, such as “Robot” and “NPC-ing” (non-player characters in online gaming), allowing for the portrayal of relationships that people have with their online identity and how it is skewed by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Augmented Reality (AR). Through this concept, the line between the technological and the physical will be blurred and the audience will have to figure out what is real and what is artificial.

 

Lapree Lala

Lapree Lala, a professional Afro dancer, takes on an innovative residency project, Afro-Modern Fusion, to elevate her artistic practice. Building on her transformative experience from Dance Ireland's HATCH award, this residency offers a unique chance for Lapree to delve into cultural fusion and innovative choreography at a pivotal stage in her career. This residency grants Lapree essential resources for deep creative exploration. Through collaborations with renowned Afro dance instructors and her mentor Tebza Diphehlo, she will expand her movement vocabulary and enhance her choreographic diversity. By blending Afro dance with modern techniques, Lapree aims to pioneer new choreographic methods, forging a distinctive artistic voice. Addressing previous obstacles, the residency provides financial support, alleviating funding constraints, and offers online workshops with international experts, overcoming the limits of in-person training. Collaborating with socially engaged artist Karen Aguiar, Lapree will explore dance's role in societal change. This partnership will enrich her artistic perspective and promote inclusive practices, ensuring dance benefits diverse communities. Through intensive research, training, and collaboration, this residency marks a crucial step in Lapree Ncube's professional growth, positioning her to make a significant impact in the dance world.

 

Marion Cronin

Marion will use this residency opportunity to follow a new line of choreographic inquiry, by making a new solo with the working title ‘Ok I’m Ready’ She aims to explore the threshold between being on and off stage and the power and vulnerability that exits in that moment. In the context of dance she is interested in how we transition between these performative states. She is curious to find parallels between on stage transformations and the transformation needed to prepare ourselves to be seen in our daily lives. In the studio Marion wants to flesh out these ideas; constructing and deconstructing the body, shifting between different personas, personal branding and playing with false identities. What fascinates Marion is how these iterations of identity are challenging and potentially blurring the lines between authenticity and artificially. She is curious about the liberating potential and looming dangers with the blurring of these lines. Delving into the theme of construction and deconstructing she will explore her background in design to experiment with how she can not only transform the body but also transform the studio space in the process. Bringing in different materials for the body and the space to work with.

 

Oran Leong

"Let me tell you a tale about me. It might be closer to your story than you think." Dance artist Oran Leong will spend his Residency developing his solo multidisciplinary practice. By tapping into both his diverse movement range and the power of spoken word, he will explore how multiple modes of communication can convey a story, particularly since dance is always interpretative. He will reflect on biography to draw from personal experience as raw matter and hopes to generate material for future dissemination.

 

Rachel Ní Bhraonáin

Rachel will use the week to focus on her practice as a choreographer and writer. She will reflect on her own works for stage and screen and her methods of creation to date. She will also begin to experiment with new ways of creating Movement from/for writing and Writing from movement. This experimentation will be underpinned by a new area of enquiry for Rachel around themes of ageing, decay, archiving and hope.

 

Parvathi Jayaram

Rediscover the Symphony of Small Joys: A Multidisciplinary Dance Experience Small Joys, a captivating new dance production, invites you to celebrate the beauty found in the seemingly ordinary moments of life. This innovative work blends the elegance of Mohiniyattam, a graceful Indian classical dance form, with the evocative melodies of original contemporary classical music. More than just a performance, Small Joys is a journey of reflection. Through the expressive movements of the dancer and the emotive soundscape, prepare to be transported on a quest to rediscover the simple pleasures often overlooked in our fast-paced world. Experience the joy in the mundane: a cup of morning tea, the warmth of sunlight on your skin. Small Joys promises a transformative experience, reminding us of the profound happiness woven into the everyday. Don't miss your chance to witness this unique artistic collaboration!

 

Bobbi Byrne

 

Co-collaborator Soso Ní Cheallaigh

 

Bobbi Byrne (she/her) is a dancer with an unilateral congenital below elbow difference, her right arm ending at the elbow. This asymmetrical body schema has defined her relationship to the world in complex ways. Bobbi´s impairment introduces a significant weight difference between her right and left sides. This imbalance gives a natural instability to her movement, This Instability is equally reflected in Bobbi’s personal life, where they are currently transitioning gender, country and lifestyle. In this residency she will be joined by collaborator Soso Ní Cheallaigh (They/Them). Soso is a disability-led dance and theatre artist with a neurodiverse perspective. Together, Bobbi and Soso will explore these themes of asymmetry and instability as drivers for new movement. They will explore the effects of imbalance and asymmetry across basic actions of standing, turning, walking & sprinting and falling and weave these mechanical investigations into Bobbi’s recent life experiences, linking physical and emotional through the theme of instability.

 

Soso Ní Cheallaigh is a disability-led multidisciplinary artist with credits spanning theatre, visual arts, dance, film, and television. They are a current INVEST Artist with Theatre and Dance NI and a recent graduate of Inclusive Dance Cork 2024. Soso's recent credits include Burkitt (TG4/NI Screen), Midsummer Night's Dream (Rogue Encounters/Lyric Theatre Belfast) and SHIFT (DU Dance/Southpaw)