POLITICAL MOTHER, an extraordinary dance show which has wowed audiences in Britain and earned rave reviews from the critics will be performed in Galway in July.
The Galway Arts Festival will present the Irish premiere of the Hofesh Shechter Company’s critically acclaimed Political Mother in the Black Box Theatre from Tuesday July 20 to Saturday 24 at 7.30pm.
The choreography and music for the show is by Hofesh Shechter, who will also give a post-show talk with the audience on Wednesday 21.
Singled out as one of the most exciting choreographers to emerge in recent years, Shechter’s Political Mother is an exhilarating and ambitious dance show, which fuses theatre and music with the very best in dance.
The show received its world premiere in Brighton in May and has since been performed at London’s Sadler’s Wells and the Sydney Opera House. Reviews included a rave five-star rating from The Daily Telegraph while BBC’s Newsnight said: “Hofesh Shechter looks set to do for dance what the Young British Artists did for art, which is to propel it into the mainstream, and connect it with a younger audience.”
Political Mother is the first full-length dance piece for Shechter’s internationally renowned company since he exploded onto the world stage to huge acclaim with Uprising and In Your Rooms.
The show features 10 dancers and a live band with 10 drummers, all helping to tell a story which transports the audience between different worlds and societies, groups and couples, states of mind, and styles of music.
“I guarantee you will have never seen anything quite like this show which is epic in its scale and ambition,” said the Galway Arts Festival artistic director Paul Fahy. “Audiences are in for an overwhelming and amazing experience. This is one of the best shows I have ever seen in my entire life and one of the biggest productions we have presented in the history of the festival. It couldn’t be more perfect.”
Hofesh graduated from the Jerusalem Academy for Dance and Music before moving to Tel Aviv to join the world renowned Batsheva Dance Company, where he worked with artistic director Ohad Naharin who choreographed Minus 16 for Hubbard Street Dance which was performed at the Galway Arts Festival in 2006.
In 2007, London’s three major dance venues, Southbank Centre, Sadler’s Wells and The Place, collaborated on a unique producing venture, commissioning Hofesh to create In Your Rooms, which was nominated for a South Bank Show Award and recipient of the Critic’s Circle Award for Best Choreography in 2008.
Hofesh has also choreographed the dance sequence for the opening of the second series of Channel 4’s popular drama Skins.
Galway Arts Festival runs from July 12 to 25. The festival programme and tickets are available from www.galwayartsfestival.com
