DANCING DAYS is the name of a major event taking place in The Black Box Theatre from Thursday April 19 to Saturday 21 that will celebrate cutting edge Irish dance through performances, talks, and film.
Billed as a conference/dance festival, Dancing Days takes its inspiration from the ‘rambling house’ tradition where neighbours would gather in a local house for music, dancing, and merriment.
As such, next week’s event will see traditional artforms such as straw boys, the house céilí, and sean-nós dance meld with contemporary, site-specific dance works, installations, and artworks to create an exciting and inspiring dance experience.
The event is organised by Dr Nessa Cronin and Tim Collins of NUI Galway’s Centre for Irish Studies; Dr Karen Till of NUI Maynooth; and Galway dancer-in-residence, Ríonach Ní Neill, who according to The Irish Times, “would wow anyone (and there are many ) with a fear of modern dance”.
The festival begins on Thursday 19 at 7pm with the official launch, followed at 8pm by the world première of Frame in the Black Box at 8pm.
Here multi-award winning architect Michelle Fagan (FKL Architects ), choreographer Ríonach Ní Néill, and film-maker Marek Bogacki explore the architectural imagination and creative process, reflecting on our experience of the built environment as something made as much of ideas and emotions as of material.
On Friday 20 at 2pm in the Black Box, there will be a performance of CORP_REAL which will mix live action and film and feature internationally acclaimed and award winning choreographers and dancers such as Jenny Roche, Fearghus Ó Conchúir, Cindy Cummings, and Andrew Duggan.
This will be followed at 3.30pm by the CORP_REAL Symposium which will ask if dance can help us better understand ourselves. The event is open to the public and will hear contributions from academics, artists, dancers, scientists, and architects.
Dancing Days concludes on Saturday April 21 with CUAIRTEOIREACHT - The Rambling House. Here the audience will be ferried by bus from the Town Hall at 6.30pm to a mystery location in Connemara to experience a cuairteoireacht of the past but that is housed very much in the present moment. Expect straw boys, a house céili, contemporary dance, and installations and art works, including Cindy Cummings and Andrew Duggan’s 9.8 metres per second.
As well as the dance/arts events in the Black Box, NUI Galway will hold an international conference entitled Mapping Spectral Traces V which will explore the connections between how we inhabit everyday spaces and how the past has shaped and moulded the places in which we live today.
There will also be a pop-up art exhibition in the Black Box Theatre and the launch of a new essay collection, Irish Contemporary Landscapes in Literature and the Arts, in Charlie Byrne's Bookshop.
Conference events at NUI Galway are free and open to the public. Tickets for Dancing Days are available from the Town Hall Theatre through www.tht.ie and 091 - 569777. For more information email [email protected] or see www.nuigalway.ie/centre_irish_studies
