Dance Ireland Residency Recipients 2023
Dance Ireland is pleased to announce the recipients of the Autumn/Winter Dance Ireland Residency awards.
Following an open call, we are pleased to announce the recipients of the Dance Ireland Residency programme for Autumn/Winter 2023. The Dance Ireland Residency Programme exists to support dance artists to create new dance work, engage in artistic research, and maintain a studio practice. Residencies are aimed at non-funded artists or projects. We offer support through wholly subsidised studio space at DanceHouse, Dublin. Read more about the recipients and their plans below.
Aneta Dortova
Aneta is a percussive dance and contemporary dance artist, and musician. As a part of this residency, Aneta wants to revisit the research for her solo. She developed and presented the piece as a work in progress during the second semester of her MA studies in Contemporary Dance Performance at the Irish World Academy in May 2022. Most of the studio time will be spent physically working on the choreography and its concept. She will focus on working on the timing, length, and transition between its segments. She will also work further on researching the topics of the piece and ways to create a narrative out of them which then can be imprinted into the movement.
Nóra Fay
Nóra Ní Anluain Fay graduated from Fontys University, (NL) in choreography and is the artistic director of NAF Dance. Nora’s primary movement language traditionally revolves around gestural physical theatre and slapstick comedy. A key element that she wants to introduce to her practice is delving into all the possibilities that the use of floorwork has the power to open up. Floorwork entails such power and raw physicality that it fits perfectly in line with the theme of her new work, about the intensely physical GAA. The first half of each day will be spent training and exploring the discipline of floorwork. Then delving into how that language can transfer to the material of the piece. The week will culminate with a trial showing of the finished work on Friday with a discussion and feedback talk to be able to keep progressing the piece and pushing it forward.
Laurie Schneider
Laurie Schneider is a dancer, artist, choreographer, performer and movement medicine practitioner. A graduate of The College of Dance and The University of Northumbria at Newcastle-upon-Tyne ( BA Hon Dance) Laurie created expanDance with Rachel Wynne (USA) in 2006. Multidimensional, resilient, intuitive, and courageous movement practice is essential to her work.
Laurie will use her time in the residency to investigate, through dance, the experiences of women on the Island of Ireland pre and post the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Her focus is those born in the times of The Troubles, and those that came of age in the time of the ceasefire, who regularly traversed the Border. She brings to the residency a series of interviews she has conducted with the women of her extended family to tell the stories of women close to her who have managed to create, live, mother, and survive while navigating a volatile, ever-changing landscape. These interviews will form building blocks for a soundscape and new choreographic material.
Chloe Commins
Chloe is a Dublin-based aerial artist who specialises in aerial hoop and fabric. In the last few years, Chloe has performed and trained regionally and internationally. She coaches regular aerial classes and more recently has focused on combining aerial with theatre and dance in her work.
In her residency week, Chloe plans on spending dedicated time focused on exploration and research of the use of ISL (Irish Sign Language) with movement on the floor and aerial hoop. As a CODA (Child of Deaf Adult), she hopes to use this research to further inform her work and to raise awareness for Ireland's third official language and the history that comes with it.
Lapree Lala
Lapree Ncube is an Afrodancer and choreographer currently based in Galway. For her residency, Lapree will be focused on exploring the intersection of Afro and contemporary dance, to create a new work that celebrates the connection of sisterhood. Throughout this residency, she will be collaborating with two other talented professionals to delve into various avenues and discover innovative ways to express the bond of sisterhood through dance. Lapree is excited to embark on this creative journey and see how the artists’ collective efforts will bring this vision to life.
Tara Bredemeier
Tara is a dance artist from Germany who moved to Dublin in November 2022. After finishing her dance pedagogical studies (based on Laban Technique) in Germany and being part of a Dancehall crew back in Hamburg, she is furthermore exploring dance through Afro, Hip Hop, and new forms of Contemporary Dance.
She is looking forward to her residency, where the aim is to develop new material for future steps ahead. It will also mark the beginning of collaborating with other Irish dance artists that she has engaged with since arriving in Dublin.
Ruaidhrí Maguire
Ruaidhrí Maguire is a ballet dancer and choreographer from Ireland. He is currently the youngest male principal dancer at the Baltic Opera Ballet, Gdansk, Poland, performing leads in Giselle, The Nutcracker, Cinderella and Don Quixote. He is also the Artistic Director of Six Dance Collective.
As a choreographer, he recently premiered his new work 'Beating Streets in City Hearts' at the Baltic Opera in Gdansk as well as performed a preview of his upcoming ballet White Doves at this year's edition of Dancer From The Dance Festival. With Six Dance Collective, and with support from Arts Council Northern Ireland, he is creating the full-length version of White Doves which premieres in Aug 2023 at The MAC in Belfast. He will also be a resident artist with Galway Dance Project to develop a new piece Where Two Paths Meet this summer.
With this Dance Ireland residency, Ruaidhrí is aiming to begin research for a new dance film titled ‘The Riders’. His first self-led choreography specifically for film, Ruaidhrí wants to create a piece in response to J. M. Synge’s one-act play ‘Riders to the Sea’ where we see the thoughts of each son about longing to return home to their mother Maurya on Inis Meáin. As Ruaidhrí’s creative practice focuses strongly on internal and external relationships, as well as relationships with the environment, this residency will allow him to explore relationships with what is there and what isn’t, what is real and what is corporeal (relating to a person's body as opposed to their spirit).
Jonathan Walsh & Kate Dunne
Jonathan and Kate are currently developing separate pieces that delve into the areas of gender, sexuality, health, and grief, examining how these factors intersect. Both pieces will incorporate aerial, dance, soundscape, and theatre. Drawing on each of their personal journeys to create an emotional and abstract telling of the male/female experience in modern Ireland. Kate and Jonathan have been training together in Dance House for the past year, each working on their own individual pieces. During this time they noticed the cross-over in their works thematically while offering the other side of the coin in gendered experiences. They are working toward presenting abstracts of their show at Bricolage in Belfast, curated by Emmen Donnelly. They will be presented alongside one another as both complementary and juxtaposing works due to thematic crossover. Musician Brian Dillon will be in the studio to create a shared soundscape for the pieces