It’s been a while since I stepped into a studio to work with a group of dancers that I didn’t already know. Much as I was looking forward to the opportunity to work with the dance artists of Luail (six of the eight strong company), I was also nervous about whether I’d be able to communicate what’s important to me quickly enough. Very generously, Luail and its Artistic Director Liz Roche had offered this week with the company without any expectation that it should result in something for them.  It’s really unusual and very valuable to get research time with skilled dance artists, in generous conditions that allowed me to invite Lucia Kickham to join me as assistant.  As I’ve grown older, I know that the work is better if it benefits from the input of other perspectives and skillsets than mine.  Having those extra skills from someone else allows me to concentrate on what I do best.  And having worked with Lucia on the Step Up programme, I know how supportive it is to have her in the process with me.  Teaching warm ups each day, she helped create the environment and atmosphere in which we developed the work.  And though it’s not easy to articulate atmosphere is crucial to the world I’m hoping the dancing helps to create.

Despite or maybe thanks to having no pressure to produce material, I’ve come away with lots of choreography to work on and think about.  More importantly, I come away with a confidence that the ways I’d like to work are comprehensible to people I haven’t known for a long time and that the ideas I want to explore around body, language and ecology can be sensed through dance. 

I’ve written elsewhere about the notion of becoming compost or mulch for a new phase of work.  It’s an idea I first heard from Sue Davies when she talked about how she wanted her archive to be useful for a new generation of makers.  I’m not at the stage where I’m withdrawing from the field and hoping others will make something of what I did in the past.  But I am thinking about what I’ve been fortunate enough to learn and gather can be material for a next phase of transformation through the skills and perspectives of others.  Rather than coming to Luail and wondering what new material I could manufacture, I’ve looked to ideas, dances, experiences I’ve already had.  I’ve offered them to the dancers and we’ve composted the ideas, knowing that they will change, that energy will be released in other forms (as it is in composting) and that they will become fertile for new developments. This approach offers me a sustainable way to continue creating, to continue growing through and with others, trín a chéile.  Trín a chéile is often negative, meaning that one is undone, literally through one another but undoing of old habits, undoing of what no longer serves is a positive prospect for me.  And seeing the dancers of Luail (Rosie, Sean, Tom, Hamza, Chu and Clara) embody new possibilities and connections was a rewarding endorsement of that prospect.  

It is worth underlining for myself and others that the positive experience of working with the company was due in no small part to small dances on my own in various different residencies, half formed thoughts and inklings, shared dances with Isabella in Tearmann Aiteach.  In the moment, it’s not always easy to recognise what those small things amount to, but in hindsight I can see that they’ve been a preparation, an ongoing investigation, a deepening that is essential and whose necessity I will continue to trust.

Le grúpa rinceoirí idirnáisiúnta ní raibh mé cinnte gur bh’fhiú ceisteanna Gaeilge a roinnt mar chuid den tréimhse taighde seo ach bhí áthas orm go raibh suim ag gach éinne níos mó a chloisint faoin dteanga agus conas mar a théann sí i bhfeidhm orm. Bhíomar in ann nascanna a dhéanamh idir an Ghaeilge in Éirinn agus mionteangacha san Áis agus san Aifric. Agus chuaigh sé i bhfeidhm go mór orm gluaiseacht na rinceoirí a fheiscint faoi thionchar foclaibh Gaeilge a roghnaigh siad liom. Níl a fhios agam go fóill conas é seo a mhíniú ach braithim go bhfuil teanga (mar fhuaim, mar fhriotal, mar structúr beatha) ar nós tírdhreach agus timpeallacht a théann i bhfeidhm orainn go corportha agus nach cuirtear in iúil trí labhairt na teangan san amháin.

Táim tosnaithe I mbliana ar thionscnamh nua rince dár teideal Dúiche.  Dúiche means Hinterland in English.  As someone whose creative work has been sensitive to context as material, I’ve always been fond of the phrase an dúiche máguaird and its encompassing ‘round aboutness’. Úsaídeann An Fóclóir Beag an focal máguaird leis an Nádúr a mhíniú: “an saol máguaird seachas mar atá déanta ag an duine (ar nós plandaí, ainmhithe, aibhneacha, cnoic etc.)”. it doesn’t mention language as part of that natural hinterland but following Michael Cronin’s An Ghaeilge agus an Éiceolaíocht/ Irish and Ecology I’ve become interested in how bodies, language and ecology interrelate.  And what it means for someone brought up in the Gaeltacht to be dancing. 

Dance is often called a universal language – which isn’t really true since, like how we understand bodies, how it is perceived and practised is very culturally specific.  I’ve spoken elsewhere about how Irish feels different in my mouth, tá blas diffriúil aici a eagraíonn mo chorp I slite ar leith.  Ina theannta san, tá structúr ar leith ag comhréir  na Gaeilge – for example, word order in Irish is usually verb-subject-object, while in English it is usually subject-verb-object agus n’fheadar an bhfuil tionchar ag an fhoth-chóraghrafadóireacht san ar an slí a chumaim rince?  I have no doubt that growing up speaking Irish gave me súil eile, dearcadh eile ar an saol, an opening to the possibility of perspectives beyond the hegemony of English. 

D’ullmhaigh an dá-theangachas mé don aiteachas but as I became a teenager and young adult, I wasn’t able to explore all of my identity through Irish.  My sexuality and my dancing both took their expression in London in English.  Níorbh ionainn mo theanga máthair agus  teanga mo leannáin.  Is cuimhin liom nuair a thosnaigh Ríonach Ní Néill agus mé fhéin ag cleachtadh agus ag múineadh an rince comhaimseartha trí Ghaeilge, there was no resource to figure out what words we should use in Irish to describe the movements we wanted to teach.  There wasn’t a word for choreographer in the dictionary so we made one up – córaghrafadóir – following the form for photographer grianghrafadóir.  I used that happily for years until I noticed that tearma.ie had decided the translation was cóiréagrafaí.  Ar chóir dom glacadh leis an téarma nua?  Táim ag cloí go fóill le mo rogha, go háirithe mar go bhfuil blas níos fearr air ó dheas, i m’thuairimse.  

Because Isabella and I have allowed instinct and the queer resonance between us to guide the development of Tearmann Aiteach/ Queer Sanctuary, we’ve had to trust that sharing the work could be of value to others.  We’ve had some reassurance from the feedback of others along the way.  Whether it’s the responses of collaborators, of individuals and small groups we’ve invited to witness the process or of audiences for work in progress performances, we’ve sought feedback knowing somehow that the work is an action, an impulse to change the possibilities for ourselves and others in the world.  And while dancing for ourselves could have had a transformational effect on us – and that’s not insignificant or without value – it’s the desire to expand possibilities more widely that has made sharing the process an essential element of our practice.  The courage and vulnerability that sharing requires had become part of our dancing.  The dancing is not something that precedes sharing, it is now conditioned by the prospect of sharing even when it’s just the two of us in a rehearsal room.

Thanks to Patricio Cassinoni for this production trailer