Author Archives: Fearghus
← Older posts Newer posts →Tabernacle: Rehearsals through other people’s eyes
May 25, 2011Other people’s perspective help me see the work afresh. That’s been the value of having open rehearsals and sharing Tabernacle’s working process with a wider group of people than would usually come to the studio. read more…
Posted in Blog | Leave a commentTabernacle: Half way through our Dublin rehearsals
May 14, 2011Since getting to Dublin we’ve been busy. There have been interviews for Imeall, for TG4, for the Irish Times. There was a visit to evensong.
Members of the Macushla Dance Club have been in the studio with us giving the dancers insight into their experiences of religion and responding to what they perceived in our work. I was struck in particular by Eithne’s reminding us that as a women she was instructed to think of her body was ‘an occasion of sin’.
I’ve finished rehearsals this week tired but also reassured that we’ve made material that is physically and emotionally arresting. Thanks to the dancers the work has an integrity that moves me and that I hope others will find equally engaging. But there is still work to do. To see into the potential of the material we have, to understand it better, to add, to subtract, to attend even more carefully to what it could articulate. read more…
Posted in Blog | Leave a commentTabernacle: seeing religion on my way to rehearsals
May 5, 2011It makes sense to me to be rehearsing Tabernacle in Dublin now. I’ve been trying to communicate to the performers the pervasiveness of religious influence in Ireland, even as many people distance themselves from the church and my walk from Broadstone to Dancehouse each morning confirms that continuing influence.
Tabernacle asks how we carry these images and attitudes in our bodies and whether that legacy can adapt to the next individual and collective movements we need to make read more…
Tabernacle: dancing the revolution: The Place Residency Week 2
April 25, 2011Of course the tradition from which Iarla and I come is a rural Gaeltacht one where community is held together by many ties and customs of which religion is an integral but not exclusive element. When I imagine the crash from which Ireland is still trying to fashion a recovery, I am aware that we have a long history of traumatic and devastating events from which we have had to navigate futures. We have already lost worlds, lives and people. And here we are again. read more…
Posted in Blog | Leave a commentTabernacle: The Place residency
April 9, 2011Independent dancers like Bernadette, Mikel, Elena, Matthew, Stéphane and Peggy are used to arriving in new environments and to having the resilience and resourcefulness necessary to build new choreographic structures that organise how they relate. This skills of resilience and resourcefulness seem particularly relevant in Ireland at the moment as people still reach for new structures to build their way out of an economic and moral crash. For many the pursuit of money replaced religion in providing an orientation in personal and national life. It’s time to work out how to orient ourselves for the next part of the journey. read more…
Posted in Blog | Leave a commentTattered Outlaw: An article on Jaywick
March 29, 2011The Martello Tower where Tattered Outlaws of History opens on Friday is in Jaywick. An article in today’s Guardian describes some of challenges of that area: Jaywick, a ward of Tendring district council in north-east Essex, has earned the unhappy distinction … read more…
Posted in Blog | Leave a commentTabernacle: Workshop at Irish World Academy, UL
March 21, 2011I’m keen that Tabernacle is the ultimately the kind of structure that can shelter a wide variety of people and a diversity of experiences. To create that possibility, I’ve arranged to do workshops with different groups of dancers from around Ireland during the creation process.
At the Irish World Academy at UL, I worked with current and former MA students in Contemporary Dance Performance. I was also able to invite Mikel to teach warm up but also to absorb some of the spirit and experiences of the workshop that I hope will be carried in to the creation process and the performances of Tabernacle. read more…
Posted in Blog | Leave a commentTattered Outlaws: East Coast Towers March Filming visit
March 3, 2011I think we’ve worked out the name of the installation:
Tattered Outlaws of History + If the Invader comes = Tattered Outlaws read more…
Tabernacle: Stary Browar research, Poznan
February 10, 2011Starting research in the Art Stations Foundation in Poznan, I find, again, that I am alone in a studio. It’s a familiar situation but maybe too familiar: most of the best ideas come when people share their knowledge and work together. read more…
Posted in Blog | 2 CommentsTabernacle: Research in Stary Browar, Poznan
February 8, 2011I’m in Poznan because Joanna Leśnierowska who runs and curates the dance programme at Stary Browar invited me to visit as part of my Modul Dance research. It’s a great opportunity as I’ve never been to Poland and, given Tabernacle’s focus on Catholicism and the Irish body, it’s interesting to see Catholicism in action in Poland and to think about how that impacts on the greater Irish body now has a lot of Polish DNA in it. read more…
Posted in Blog | Tagged Poznan, Stary Browar, Tabernacle | Leave a comment ← Older posts Newer posts →