Dance Ireland Residency: Bobbi Byrne

Date:

Mon 25 Nov 2024 - Fri 29 Nov 2024

Time:

14:59 - 14:59

Venue:

DanceHouse

Bobbi Byrne is a dancer with an upper limb difference. She was one of the first professional disabled dancers in Ireland. Her practice is based in martial arts, integrated with contact improvisation, release technique and Laban movement theory. Since 1996, she has worked as a performer and facilitator in a variety of settings, always with a focus on inclusion and accessibility. She was a core member of Counterbalance, and later Fluxusdance under Cathy O Kennedy for almost two decades before relocating to Spain and working with Madrid based inclusive dance companies Dan Zass and Meet Share Dance. As a facilitator and educator Bobbi has worked with the ENFO environmental agency and the NIID, now the TCIID, at Trinity college. She was also the Community Outreach Facilitator at the Firkin Crane for several years where she worked with with local disability organisations, the elderly and the unhoused. Unifying Bobbi´s practice is a passion for diversity and inclusion in dance and a fascination with the unique movement vocabularies of each individual body. Her own impairment has made her keenly interested in exploring ideas of asymmetry and imbalance and how these qualities interact with the assumptions of much dance practice.

Read about her collaborator here:

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)

Read more about Bobbi...

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.