Uillinn Dance season 2025: Nóra Ní Anluain Fay from NAF Dance

 

Please Break my Heart, NAF Dance

What role does place play in your work?
I feel like place and environment has no choice but to seep into the artistic decisions that you make. Being from Ireland I haven’t been able to escape the humor that charges through our culture and it’s inevitably made its way to become one of the leading factors of my work. As I trained in the Netherlands our distinctive Irish nature was quickly highlighted to me as they have a very different tonal landscape. We have such a unique approach, lightness and charm that I adore weaving into my work. It adds this camp flavor to dance which can often be foreign to dance and contemporary dance in particular. Working in Ireland has not only shaped me but also the work I continue to create.

Who or what are your biggest influences as an artist?
I’m always observing my surroundings and ideas form from such mundane places. People watching and eavesdropping are endless sources for me. Any moment that gives an accidental insight into people is where my ideas truly spark from. Once I have that moment of raw excitement I’m struck with a clear vision of the piece. This has led me to creating work around growing up, what royalty do when they think no one is looking, deranged housebound identical twins, reality television and wanting to be Cinderella. I simply adore Dolly Alderton, Phoebe Waller Bridge, John William Watson, Michael Keegan Dolan, Claudia Winkleman, Rose Matafeo and so many more. I want to pick the brain of anyone who can make me laugh and cry.

How do you approach collaboration in your practice?
I used to shy away from collaboration as I was afraid that I would lose my voice within the work or lose the permission to be able to call it my work. I always marveled at people who felt settled enough to have a vast team of collaborators. It wasn’t until my first full length production ‘Ham Sandwiches and Discipline,’ where I really felt the benefit of having incredible collaborators. I worked with Kitty O’Brien and Jack Pierce for costumes, and it was mesmerising to see how I could have a wacky brief, and they were able to find ways of making it come to life. Tien Le as the sound designer elevated everything they touched and Ben Sullivan as my co-performer constantly brings new ideas to the table. This allows me to be a better maker and choreographer as I don’t have to half being doing all the jobs and makes the work as a whole a million times better. It really makes me determined to find ways and resources to be able to continue these invaluable collaborations.

What’s a place or moment that has shaped who you are today?
In my third year of college, I spent two months on exchange at the Centre National Danse Contemporaine in Angers, France. Simply put I had a ball. It was during my time there that I was introduced to so many new artists and ways of moving and thinking and after getting into such a rut during covid, I was reinvigorated with a desire to create. I read Dolly Alderton’s ‘Everything I Know About Love,’ which has become my choreographing bible and is littered with notes. I watched ‘Fleabag,’ for the first time which thrilled me and so many more. These all came together and led me to create a solo work called ‘A Piece for Seven People,’ which was pivotal for myself in understanding how I want to work. It paved the way for me to be able to create my new work ‘Please Break my Heart.’

Can you describe what you’re working on during your time in the studio
I’m developing my next piece 'Please Break my Heart.’ An interdisciplinary solo work fusing dance, text, theatre and film. This love story focuses on the quest for true love purely for the sake of wanting to discover how it feels to have your heart truly and utterly broken. Based on the fact that all the classic films, books, plays and songs are all about love and heartbreak - trying to actively get my heart broken in order to have content for a piece. After all, aren’t all the best works of art centred around love and heartbreak? Saturated with drama, comedy and chaos. Giddily marching towards a broken heart to understand what is this endless pit of inspiration for makers called heartbreak?

From Pride and Prejudice to Bridget Jones, Casablanca to Notting Hill, Bridgerton to The Way
We Were, it dives into the romantic troupes that mold how we see and experience romance. 'My New Year's resolutions for 2023 were to watch more daytime TV and to get my heartbroken...' - the opening line of the work sums it all up. Finding a way to balance the mundane and the supposed universal transformative experience of being heartbroken. As with each NAF Dance piece it walks the line between comedy and tragedy and allows the audience to open up to the heartache through laughter. Creating a piece that anyone can enjoy while maintaining a high artistic quality. It captures the fundamental pillars of my work by being daring and dynamic in both form and content. It captures dance in its utmost theatricality and fuses it with projections, text and music.

To book Please Break My Heart Uillinn Dance Season 2025

Blog by UL Coop Contemporary Dance Student Hetty Gazzaniga 

Uillinn Dance Season 2025: Monica Munoz

 Four, UL BA3, Photographer Maurice Gunning

What role does place play in your work?
My work doesn't focus on a specific geographical ‘place’ but rather on the internal spaces of human experience and the body-space relationship within the performance setting  

Who or what are your biggest influences as an artist?
Pina Bausch, was and still is probably the most influential artist to me, I believe like her that : “Dance is something other than technique. We forget where the movements come from. They are born from life…”

How do you approach collaboration in your practice?
In my work, everything belongs to everything else - the music, the set, the movement and whatever is said, so we are all working together to bring something alive.

What’s a place or moment that has shaped who you are today?
I think my parents had a big impact on who I am… I’m just obsessed with the body, and I’m obsessed with the way the body can convey meaning and carry emotions. I am a workaholic and I have inherited this from my parents, they had a very strong work ethic, they moved from rural Spain to Barcelona to work, work, work… I am a working class working artist…

Can you describe what you’re working on during your time in the studio?
In very different ways and depending on who I am working with the process could be very different but I am always trying to show that there are other ways of looking at the world. I want to feel connection, and to bring people closer through dance.

To book Four Uillinn Dance Season 2025

Blog by UL Coop Contemporary Dance Student Hetty Gazzaniga 

Uillinn Dance Season 2025: Tara Brandel

Missing, Tara Brandel. Photograph by Emma Jervis

What role does place play in your work? 

Generally, 'place' plays a big role in my work but for this particular solo it is much more about time looking at global parallels between the 1930s and now as the rise of the far right eradicate queer and trans rights and liberties. 

Who or what are your biggest influences as an artist?

I have always been very influenced by gender expressions, experiences and by burlesque, drag, and cabaret especially within queer culture. In Missing, I use drag and burlesque to explore the pivotal queer women that have been erased from history that I am exploring in this solo show- especially Bronislava Nijinska and Margaret Skinnider.

How do you approach collaboration in your practice?

My most recent show Change has enormous amounts of collaboration between the dancers, scientists and creative collaborators. But for this solo show Missing, I am really enjoying being in the studio by myself, and the kind of focus that can emerge through that solo isolation.

Can you describe what you’re working on during your time in the studio?

I am working on a new interdisciplinary dance theatre solo called Missing, which looks at the pivotal queer women who have been erased from history such as seminal choreographer Bronislava Nijinska (sister of Nijinsky), and Glasgow born Margaret Skinnider who led a battalion of men in the 1916 Uprising in Dublin.

To book Missing Uillinn Dance Season 2025

 

Blog by UL Coop Contemporary Dance Student Hetty Gazzaniga 

Uillinn Dance Season 2025: Justine Cooper

 

 Necromancer, Ian Wilson + Justine Cooper

What role does place play in your work?
PLACE ~ architecture, history, memory, character, shelter, embrace. Place and body meeting feels like a duet.  As the two things meet the exchange will always shimmy alive a third thing~ newness, surprise & creative treasure that might not otherwise emerge.

I most enjoy when the creation process has time to come into being within the space that it will be performed as each place has a particular character/ energy signature and when you have time to know a a place intimately it shapes the work so the space is invited to become visible, not just as host but as companion.

Who or what are your biggest influences as an artist?
Punk Methodology, Sculpture, Knee High Theatre, Collage, Robert lepage, Ritual, Deborah Hay, Da Da Absurdity, Pina Bausch, Myth, David Lynch, Operatic Minimalism and light.

How do you approach collaboration in your practice?
I see collaboration as ritual – a process of listening, exchanging, and transforming. Finding the way to allow process to be a map of possibilities whilst being open and brave enough to allow adaption & new findings through the moment to moment unfolding exchange.

 
What’s a place or moment that has shaped who you are today?
As a lover of the art form of collage I always find narrowing the question to a single moment tricky. Instead, I think of every place, moment & person along the way like water shaping rock.  Specific places like Japan, NZ, Eastern Europe seem to have coloured a kind of theatricality that I lean into but probably working with Meryl Tankards Australian Dance Theatre as a young dance artist was one of the deep formative influences.  I was introduced to Yoga, which became a companion of support through the next twenty-five years and because Meryl Tankard worked as a soloist with Pina Bausch the creativity of the work had a European dance theatre feeling and each work so incredibly different. I think this influence inspired my interest in working with other art forms as a way of reinventing and continually keeping interested in my own field of movement.

Can you describe what you’re working on during your time in the studio?
I’m involved in NECROMANCER in the role of movement director. It’s a new sound work composed by Ian Wilson and is a sonic exorcism inspired by a series of photographs by Akihiko OKAMURA around Northern Ireland’s the Troubles.

At the moment I’m creating five masks from foraged nature and found object as a starting point for the visual feeling of the piece. The studio time will be focused on creating a movement score for the 4 musicians based on tribal patterning, repeated motives, gesture & ritual.  Anchors of intention are clearing,  metaphorphosis and primal re-enchantment.  I'm looking forward to the great experiment of finding a way that can allow the musicians to play, read musical score whilst holding the embodiment as a parallel communication network.

To book Necromancer For Uillinn Dance Season 2025

Blog by UL Coop Contemporary Dance Student Hetty Gazzaniga 

Uillinn Dance Season 2025: Square head productions

Variation of a Stickman, Squarehead Productions 

Who or what are your biggest influences as an artist?
These days I don’t find one genre more interesting than another. Instead, I’m drawn to people with interesting processes. Lately, I’ve found the thought processes of (mostly independent) game designers the most thought provoking. I think it’s because they are often less focused on self-expression, as many artists are, and more concerned with creating experiences. I believe art should always be experiential.

How do you approach collaboration in your practice?
I see collaboration happening on two essential levels. The first is in the process of making a work. I have a few trusted people I regularly invite to see my work and discuss it with me. I also actively collaborate with artists who are part of projects I’m creating. On the other hand, I often support other artists as a dramaturg or outside eye. I never perform in other people’s work.

The second level is broader: I see performance, and art in general, as a fundamentally collaborative act. For an artwork to speak, it needs someone to speak to. Recently, I’ve been fixated on art as an expression of “us” rather than “I.” If someone is moved by something I’ve made, then in a sense it also represents their expression too.

What’s a place or moment that has shaped who you are today?
The deaths of loved ones. These moments grounded me in the reality of life quite early on. I will always try and make the most of this beautiful tragedy we are all a part of.  

Can you describe what you’re working on during your time in the studio?
Since I would define myself as a conceptual artist these days, I tend to work loosely on several projects at once. When I'm not on tour performing, I spend my time following what interests me, allowing ideas to emerge in their own time. After a decade and a half of training for around six hours a day, I’m now more focused on making work and following what excites me. You’ll often find me in the studio playing music, drawing, reading, or studying chess....that is when I’m not bogged down with production work.

For more information on Variations of a Stickman at Uillinn Dance Season 2025

Blog by UL Coop Contemporary Dance Student Hetty Gazzaniga 

Uillinn Dance Season 2025: Flora Fauna Project

 

The Peace Process by Flora Fauna Project

What role does place play in your work?
We are trying to create a reflective and immersive space, where audiences are in the same level and need to “co-exist” with the performers.

Who or what are your biggest influences as an artist?
Nature. The sunlight, movement of water and wind, animal kingdom, insects… all the wonders of life out there!

How do you approach collaboration in your practice?
We try our best to be inclusive, fair, encouraging and supportive of each other in the creative process

What’s a place or moment that has shaped who you are today?
My first home in Co Jämtland, Sweden and my second home in the Wicklow mountains, Ireland. 

Can you describe what you’re working on during your time in the studio?
At the moment we are trying to bring everything together - the movement score, the ensemble, the light and video design, the set, the journey of the audiences.. world building!

To book The Peace Process Uillinn Dance Season 2025

Blog by UL Coop Contemporary Dance Student Hetty Gazzaniga 

Uillinn Dance Season: Elaine McCague

Boots and Other Myths, Elaine McCague, Photographer Micaela Vetere

What role does place play in your work?
Place is always the starting point. My history of site-specific performance has taught me to listen closely to landscapes, architecture, and atmospheres, letting them shape the language of the body and materials. In Boots and Other Myths, working in rural contexts grounds the research in raw, elemental environments that heighten instinct and physical response.

Who or what are your biggest influences as an artist?
I draw from aerial circus traditions, visual art, and myth. More than anything, I’m influenced by instinct — responding physically to what arises in the moment — and by the possibilities of the circus body to move beyond spectacle into poetry.

How do you approach collaboration in your practice?
Collaboration is about trust and exchange. I create frameworks where ideas can bounce, shift, and surprise, allowing the work to grow beyond my own perspective. I understand that time is a factor to allow others’ ideas to be absorbed into the process, and value the ways they expand and challenge my own instincts.

What’s a place or moment that has shaped who you are today?
Encountering Fatt Matt in a cafe in Western Australia, ringmaster of a small circus out there. The curiosity of a normal man wearing well-dressed clown shoes while having coffee was absurd, and it led me to seek out the world of circus, absurdity, and impossible feats. An absurd moment in the ordinary.

Can you describe what you’re working on during your time in the studio?
I’m developing a performance under the working title Boots and Other Myths. Studio time is focused on exploring the physicality of the piece on the rope, and the challenge of interacting with the object of a pair of working boots, whilst experimenting with abstract and absurd scenarios. I’m collaborating with writer-director Carmel Winters to shape the narrative, allowing ideas to emerge through play, instinct, and the interplay between object, body, and space.

To book Boots and other Myths Uillinn Dance season 2025

Blog by UL Coop Contemporary Dance Student Hetty Gazzaniga