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Closing Date: Monday 25 November at 12 pm IST

Step Up Dance Project is a programme of professional development for recent dance graduates or equivalent early-career dance professionals, curated by Fearghus Ó Conchúir with Dance Limerick Director Mary Wycherley and delivered under the guidance of Rehearsal Director, Lucia Kickham,

Step Up celebrates its 15th edition in 2025 and we are delighted to offer an extended 8-week programme this year that will include six weeks of training and choreographic process with Philip Connaughton at Dance Limerick and the Irish World Academy, as well as two full additional weeks in the Moving in Collaboration International Intensive with Luail.

We are looking for up to five dancers born or resident in Ireland who graduated in 2022 or since then. You’re also eligible if your professional dancing career has started since 2022 but you have come through other training routes that didn’t involve graduation. This is an opportunity for dancers in the early stages of their professional career. If you are only starting your career or graduating in 2025 you are not eligible. Previous Step Up participants who match the criteria above are eligible to apply again.
the programme is focused on developing artists as performers while recognising the creativity necessary in the performer’s work. As part of this year’s edition, dancers will have the chance to train with guest teachers, such as Finola Cronin and Mufutau Yusuf, who will provide them with a range physical practices as well as a chance to hear from dance artists working in Ireland about how they sustain their practice.
The five selected dancers will receive a weekly fee of €650 over 8 weeks, along with accommodation for the duration of the programme. Participants must be available on an exclusive basis to take advantage of Step Up.

Please send your CV and a personal statement outlining your motivation to be involved in Step Up along with a weblink to a 1-minute improvisation to stepupdanceproject@gmail.com
Read the full terms and conditions at https://dancelimerick.ie/news/step-up-2025-open-call/

Isabella and Fearghus will perform Tearmann Aiteach/ Queer Sanctuary 

Dance Limerick, 14 September, 7:30pm BOOKING HERE

Dublin Fringe Festival at Project Arts Centre, 19 – 21 September, 3:30pm & 6:15pm,  BOOKING HERE

Dance Cork Firkin Crane, 11-12 October 7:30pm BOOKING HERE

12th – 15th June, 9am – 3pm, Stryx Gallery, Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham

18th – 21st June, 9am – 4pm, Norwegian Church Arts Centre, Cardiff

25th – 28th June, 8.30am – 5pm, Royal Society of Arts, London

As part of Pride Month 2024, Micro Rainbow is celebrating the creativity of LGBTQI refugees and asylum seekers with its first ever exhibition of dance art made as part of its innovative Body and Movement programme.  In 2015, Fearghus initiated the programme with Micro Rainbow as part of The Casement Project.  The programme which is now led by a team of  dance artist-facilitators and an independent producer has expanded from London to Birmingham and Cardiff with the support of funding from Paul Hamlyn Foundation

Dance Your Freedom team:
Leo Menezes, Exhibition Curator
Kevin Lloyd Exhibition Graphic Designer
Sam Williams, Film Maker
Heidi Chiu, Sound Designer
Kate Green, Photographer
Fearghus Ó Conchúir, Artistic Lead
Louisa Borg Costanzi Potts, Producer
Bethany K Knowles, Exhibition Production Manager
Kate Wakeling, Project Evaluator

The Creative team is:
Angela Dennis, Fearghus Ó Conchúir, Osian Meilir Ioan, Devon Nelson, Gerrard Martin, Poppy Norwood, Jerry Lee Dawson, Oluwaseun Olayiwola
Johnny Autin, Shivaangee Agrawal, Kate Taylor , Stephanie Schober, Takeshi Matsumoto.

Dance Ambassadors: Lister M & Hiba N

3-7 June,
Dance Limerick

Fearghus and Isabella will continue the developing a new performance of their Tearmann Aiteach/ Queer Sanctuary practice at Dance Limerick.  They will be working with theatre maker and designer, Choy Ping Ní Chléirigh Ng, lighting designer Gearóid Ó Hallmhuráin and fashion designer Gregor Pituch to prepare events for the autumn with details to be announced soon.

Ceist Residency
Dance Cork Firkin Crane
25 – 29 March

Sharing on Friday 29 March at 6pm.

Tearmann Aiteach / Queer Sanctuary is a choreographic process exploring how to make welcoming spaces of queer sanctuary that support flourishing solidarity and spritely sparkle.
Isabella Oberländer is a dance artist whose choreography and performance practice have aligned her work with a range of queer and feminist art-making in Ireland. Fearghus Ó Conchúir is a dance artist whose work has investigated the politics of gay experience in Ireland.
Isabella will teach a class on Thursday 28 March 11am – 12.30pm, tickets €5
Isabella and Fearghus will present a free end of residency Sharing on Friday 29 March at 6pm. Please email boxoffice [at] firkincrane.ie if you would like to attend.
Developed with the support of the Arts Council, Dance Limerick, Dance Ireland and Dance Cork Firkin Crane.

Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris
Thurs 7 March 2024
Opening/Vernissage from 6.30pm to 9pm

Admission free

Exhibition open until 7 April:
Mon-Sun: 2pm-6pm
Wed: 2pm-8pm

For the opening of CCI’s Project Space #3, Fearghus will perform with visual artist Gabriel Schmitz in an event of live dance and live drawing. Throughout the first half of 2024, in the run-up to the Paris Olympics, the CCI’s main exhibition room is transformed into an evolving space dedicated to experimental projects: installations, performances and conversations will follow one another over the weeks and months in order to explore the links between artistic and sporting expression.
The Project Space will also feature Fearghus’s GAA-based dance video works, Match and Abú

Northern School of Contemporary Dance CONFERENCE 2024
ARTS & CITIZENSHIP: MOVING & BELONGING
Thursday 11th January 2024 – Friday 12th January 2024

As part of the NSCD Conference on Arts & Citizenship, Fearghus and Micro Rainbow Dance Ambassador, Lister will present on the Body and Movement programme for LGBTQ+ refugees and asylum seekers. The programme was initiated as part of The Casement Project and has developed into a Paul Hamlyn Foundation funded four year programme with NGO Micro Rainbow, in London, Birmingham and Cardiff, led by a group of LGBTQ+ dance artists.

This conference seeks to address how notions of arts citizenship can bring new agendas to research.

Short Films Programme 2: Imprints
Lightmoves Festival
November 10 2:30pm
Dance Limerick, St. John’s Church, John’s Square
Book here

As part of Lightmoves Festival 2023, Abú will be screened alongside five short films.

Tearmann Aiteach/Queer Sanctuary
National Dance Platform Ireland Showcase
Tipperary Dance Festival
STAC Chapel, Davis Road, Kickham Plaza, Clonmel
17:00, Fri Oct 13, 2023,
Book here

The National Dance Platform Ireland showcases performances by emerging and established Ireland-based artists. This year, Zoë Ashe-Browne, Magdalena Hylak, Isabella Oberländer & Fearghus O Conchuir, Liz Roche, Amir Sabra and John Scott are all invited to showcase an extract of a piece, or work in progress of their brand new work.

The Art of Sport
Kilkenny Arts Festival 2023
12 August – 10 October
Butler Gallery, Evans’ Home, Kilkenny
Free

Abú, Fearghus’ work for Step Up 2022, will be screened as part of The Art of Sport, an exhibition curated by Butler Gallery director Anna O’ Sullivan that explores how artists have captured the spirit of sport in their work conveyed through . The exhibition features an eclectic fusion of both Irish and international artists that will populate the Main Gallery with works in disparate mediums such as video, photography, painting, print and sculpture. The exhibition is presented as part of Kilkenny Arts Festival 2023.