Fearghus Ó Conchúir Choreographer and Dance Artist

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Cure – Recovering Through Others: Modes of Capture Symposium 2020

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At a time when I was doing a lot of strategic thinking for others, I was really nourished by Liz’s invitation to me as an artist to record a talk for the symposium. The idea of artists’ exchange and connection had been already on my mind as I thought about how to resource myself creatively in lockdown. I’d started to think about Cure, a solo I performed made through the support of others, and so I used the symposium as an opportunity to think about what interdependence and connection might mean in a time of enforced physical isolation. read more…

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Taking the time to Listen: Leading from a distance

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Hilary Carty, Director of the Clore Leadership Programme asked me if I would share a video of my thoughts on leadership in the current crisis. I wasn’t sure I had anything to offer, and didn’t want to be adding to the digital noise, but I thought I’d share my experience of uncertainty and vulnerability as a truth from which to build. read more…

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A video by Clwstwr on the Moving Layers Project

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Clwstwr put together this video after the first phase of our Moving Layer research read more…

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Moving Layers – Week 2

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Working on this research has allowed an engagement with the intimate, the playful, the poetic, as well as the risky, the provocative and the uncertain. As well as continuing to develop our particular experience for audiences and participants, I think there’s scope for us to share this approach to immersive and augmented technologies with other makers, developers and technologists to help to shape a more inclusive, diverse and embodied approach to how these technologies evolve and in evolving, change us. read more…

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Moving Layers – Clwstwr R&D NDCWales

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I came across Rob Eagle’s work through Twitter. I noticed that he was developing AR experiences with a queer edge. For NDCWales, working with Rob could be at once an opportunity to innovate in formats of dance creation and presentation and it could also bring gender diversity and sexuality into greater focus in the Company’s creative work.s.

We were interested in a notion of fluidity and liquidity, something that linked the distinctive quality of dance that can keep ideas, experiences and consequently identity in motion, and the potential of an augmented reality to transform experience. In that idea of fluidity, for me was also a sense of the queer as a verb – an action of deviation, of motion – rather than a noun – a label and fixed identity read more…

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Nigel Charnock’s Lunatic for NDCWales

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The energy that Nigel Charnock managed to dance, scream, laugh and whack into the world still reverberates despite his too early death 7 years ago. The challenge that Nigel’s work offers to everyone – performers and audiences – is to be more, to risk going further and to have fun in the process. read more…

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Tir Cyfreddin/Shared Ground – Workshop in Cardiff Dance Festival

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“Outside competitions and professional performances, dance is a gift of one’s way of expressing oneself through movement. It makes one vulnerable. It makes one risk judgment and rejection; yet all giving is thus. A soulful gift is the giving of oneself with no expectation of reciprocity” Eva Marloes read more…

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Annwyl i mi in Japan

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It wasn’t ideal that Ireland (first in the Rugby World Cup rankings) should be beaten by what’s currently a second tier rugby nation –  Japan.  But the hosts played a beautiful game and deserved the win on the day.  The prime … read more…

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Annwyl i mi / Dear to Me: a hidden landscape

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Reading Owen Sheers’ Calon, I came across a quotation from Seamus Heaney’s Postscript that Sheers uses to describe the experience of the Welsh rugby supporter emotionally buffeted by the vagaries of the national team: ‘to catch the heart off guard and blow it open’. I was struck by the surprise, thrill and implied violence of the description and it made me seek Heaney’s poem to understand the context of the quotation. read more…

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Annwyl i mi/Dear to Me: Eisteddfod – Balchder

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The word balchder/pride is often used in relation to the values of Welsh rugby. I felt hugely proud of the dancers for their resilience, commitment and skill in embracing the environment. I saw them pull together, to take care of each other and of the work that we’d done together. And I was moved to see a community and team in action. Ultimately that’s what the work is about. Building a community of support, one that is resilient, inclusive and strong, feels like an important artistic, political, and human activity in these fractured times. read more…

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