Uillinn Dance Season: Elaine McCague

Detached, film still. Credit: Elaine McCague

What are your impressions of West Cork as a creative place for dance?
West Cork has surpassed my expectations as a creative place for dance, from the support available to dance artists and the range and quality of work being created here by inspiring artists based locally. It has been lovely to connect with the artistic community in West Cork who are so supportive and welcoming.

What was the Inspiration for your work?
In 2020 I moved to rural West Cork and found myself surrounded by detached derelict cottages. The layers of homestead Irishness and left rooms filled with sentimentalities and objects and memories alongside many pairs of eyes uncovered under the dust of time intrigued me to think about these places once called home. As an aerialist, I'm always looking to create new circus apparatus, and look at transferring the circus body, movement and skills from traditional apparatus such as the trapeze and rope onto both the structure and objects found in the domestic space. Through the process of making the short film, and a residency in Uillinn earlier this year to research a range of textiles under tension for new apparatus, the idea to consider specifically the textiles found within the derelict houses became the basis to explore a concept for this new work.

What point did the work go from concept and development to becoming a full work?
The film aspect was completed this time last year and the performance piece is in the final stages of development and rehearsal. This piece will premiere to an audience for the first time at Uillinn Dance Season. The pieces shown in Uillinn are the beginnings of a body of work with the ambition to create a series of ten films, installation and performance pieces responding to these detached rural dwellings.

How has your work evolved by bringing it to West Cork Arts Centre?
Detached the film was chosen to be programmed as part of the Uillinn Dance Season programme and in following a research residency at Uillinn and talking with the programming team the opportunity to present a live performance and installation aspect arose. The team at Uillinn have been hugely supportive and the gallery is a really unique space to present aerial dance.

Has the way you approach the work you are presenting changed from the time of its creation given that the Uillinn is a gallery space?
My interests are to create and work site-specifically and often the space presents itself before I approach the design of the performance. This is exactly what happened with this project and so it has allowed me to develop the piece working with the gallery space in mind.

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Uillinn Dance Season: Alexandre Iseli from Tipperary Dance

Tempo Rubato, Tipperary Dance. Photo: Robert Stuckenberg

 What are your impressions of West Cork as a creative place for dance?

Unfortunately I haven’t had the time yet to travel to West Cork. What I really value is the

initiative to support dance, and to involve a seasoned professional to develop the curation of

the programme. I also value the fact that the architecture of the building was not initially

designed for dance. This means that the curation of the venue cannot be limited to old

fashion values, such as for example a vast stage or an impressive lighting rig. This opens

our eyes on the fact that production values are not the key element to making great art. It

steers the art form into new directions that are for me closer to its true nature. When we

present Tempo Rubato, we will have to give up on our lighting plan, but I have no second

thoughts about this, because it doesn’t define my work.

What was the Inspiration for your work? 

I am always hoping to create this team environment in which people flourish and start to

deploy their own language. So the starting point of the work was the idea to develop

something in which the dancers would have to contribute to and be very strict with the score,

while feeling very free. A combination of rule and individual freedom in which the group can

create something exciting while the individual could continue to shine and not feel restricted.

The title Tempo Rubato make reference to a note that is found on certain music scores: it

gives license to the interpreter to play with tempo, while respecting the score.

What point did the work go from concept and development to becoming a full work?

We had no time for development and concept. I just had 4-5 weeks to create the work, in the

middle of managing our Tipperary Dance programme and festival. That said, I have been a

performer and choreographer for over 25 years now, so I have been developing my own

concepts about the type of work I want to do. For me this has more weight than the specific

topic of the piece. The nature of interactions, the place of the dancers in the process, the

source of movement, where and how movement finds its relevance, how interaction between

dancers creates meaning, these are some of my topics, and they appear in every piece. It is

about the absolute value of the human body, its depth, its sensitivity. We live in a world that

confines the body to be economically efficient, or trained, or aesthetically pleasing.

Instrumentalising the body that way is very limiting. This is not who we really are and it tends

to generate exclusion.

How has your work evolved by bringing it to West Cork Arts Centre?

Like I said we have to adapt for space and lighting. I have no worry about this. It will densify

the piece that already exists. We have to trust dancers. I actually like to put a piece in a

different environment and let the dancers find the ways. They have instinct, their body has

the knowledge and skills to respond if they trust themselves. Instead of being too formal

about this, what we have to do is open our senses, open our eyes, and the body adjusts. It’s

a challenge, it is exciting. I am aware it is not necessarily possible with every piece, but for

Tempo Rubato it is.

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Uillinn Dance Season: Nóra Ní Anluain Fay from NAF Dance

Naf Dance, Credit: Berkey Photography

What are your impressions of West Cork as a creative place for dance?

Initially I wouldn’t have made a direct link between West Cork and dance but the more time I spend there, the more I clearly see the two things intertwining. There is a hunger and an eagerness in the place to see work. This is really highlighted by the crowds that Uillinn can draw in. People that aren’t usually introduced to dance or feel welcome to it, and can bring a whole new lens to the work. West Cork is also home to so many great artists of all mediums such as musicians, writers and visual artists. Anywhere where artists, as a whole, and creativity can thrive leads to other art forms to flourish.

What was the Inspiration for your work?
I have always been infatuated by the idea of growing up, looking forward, looking back, imagining what characters we’ll become at different points of our life and figuring out how we relate to them as time passes. This has continuously come through in many of my pieces. No matter how I try to escape it I always revert back to childhood fantasies and attempt to see the world through a cinematic lens. I believe it captures such a contrasting collection of chaotic emotions from joy, nostalgia, regret, panic, spontaneity, doubt, mania, confusion and so many more that I’m continuously trying to decipher. The act of growing up is such an incredibly personal yet universal experience that I truly find it an endless pool for inspiration.

What point did the work go from concept and development to becoming a full work?
I’ve always been busy with this concept and made two solos around this topic in my third year at Fontys University, the Netherlands. I still wanted to develop it further and ‘You gotta trust the future is gonna be a bit Sexy,’ ended up being my graduation piece from the choreography department. I always had a clear vision of what it could be and as we began to explore in the studio the work stayed quite loyal to the original outline. It was supported by DansBrabant and Panama Pictures in the Netherlands to help it come into fruition and become the piece it is today.

Naf Dance, Credit: Berkey Photography

How has your work evolved by bringing it to West Cork Arts Centre?
Since it premiered in June 2023 as part of ‘Get Out,’ Festival in the Netherlands in the Theater de Nieuwe Vorst it has toured in festivals across Ireland and the Netherlands. But the performance has never been shown in its entirety in Ireland until now for Uillinn Dance Season which makes it a very special moment. I received a DLR Emerging Artist Bursary Award which makes the premiere thankfully possible. It is so lovely to return to Uillinn after being a dance artist in residence here over the summer and be able to bring new work to the audience we are growing in West Cork. The work continuously evolves by bringing it to a new audience which makes it such an enriching experience.

Has the way you approach the work you are presenting changed from the time of its creation given that the Uillinn is a gallery space?
Since its premiere the work has already been adapted to different lengths and spaces such as restaurants, outdoors and different scale theatres. Because of this ever changing setting it has really solidified the core and tone of the work. The essence of what the piece strives to do has never changed but the relationship with the audience is ever evolving. Each setting invites the audience into the world we’re creating in a different way. The fact that we’ll be performing in a gallery setting offers the possibility of it being a more intimate experience with the audience which will only add to the work.

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Uillinn Dance Season: Tara Brandel and Stacey White of Croí Glan

Croí Glan, Unseen. Image by Tomasz Madajczak

Tara Brandel:

What are your impressions of West Cork as a creative place for dance? 

The West Cork Arts Centre has been so incredibly supportive both of my work and of Croí Glan's work over the years. Our collaborations go all the way back to 1998! West Cork is also a very inspiring place to dance in terms of the beauty of the landscape, and because I was born here it feels very deeply like home which I think adds to the pleasure of making choreographic work here.

 

What was the Inspiration for your work?  

Stacey White is an abstract visual artist who has been working with plankton on and off for over 30 years. When she started talking about working with plankton here and collecting waters from the local seas to see plankton under a microscope, I started thinking about other invisible benevolent and malevolent forces, particularly because it was during the pandemic. I was interested in making an

interdisciplinary show with her that looked at many invisible forces including plankton, which creates

50% of the world's oxygen.

 

What point did the work go from concept and development to becoming a full work? 

We have been in residence at the Arts Centre all year researching and developing the show. Then we had a Tipperary Dance international residency with Tenerife LAV in June, with a work in progress showing in the La Granja Theatre, which was when we really started to develop the full work.

How has your work evolved by bringing it to West Cork Arts Centre?

I think performing in a white gallery space really inspired the video projection design by Luca Trufferelli. And it also inspired the idea of an installation. There are about 300 of Stacey White's mixed media abstract paintings of plankton on the walls of the gallery as we perform.

 

Has the way you approach the work you are presenting changed from the time of its creation

given that the Uillinn is a gallery space? 

No the show was always designed for a gallery space because it was created at Uillinn. I think what changed was when we went to La Granja Theatre and realised the show could also tour to theatre spaces.

Stacey White:

Three years ago, Tara and I began working on our collaboration for our performance of Unseen. Between lockdowns and Tara’s illness last year this project kept me going. It is about unseen things in nature both benevolent and malevolent but more and more it has become a piece about love.

I also wanted to add that the support Uillinn Arts Centre has provided over the past few years both in my artist residency and continued space to work last year was absolutely wonderful and truly helped my end of Unseen to become a reality. I am truly grateful to everyone at Uillinn Arts Centre.

Book your tickets for Uillinn Dance Season, 2023