Symposium on The Practice of Performance

Booking: Email jennytraynor14@gmail.com

Hosted by: Magdelena Hylak as part of her Galway Dance Artist Residency 2024-25
We welcome you to join us for a dynamic symposium that centres on dance as a living practice of performance and considers how presence, embodiment, and individual authorship shape the evolving nature of dance.

Key themes include:
Dance as a generator of knowledge
Words and movement
Movement as meaning-making
Creative presence and (multiple) selves
Dancing the phenomenological body

Programme

11.00 – 13.00 | Masterclass with Fearghus Ó Conchúir
Fearghus will share his perspective, as a performer and as a choreographer, on creative presence.
Working with improvisation and set material, Fearghus will be exploring how we connect to our (multiple) selves, to other (human/non-human) performers and to our wider environment. The masterclass will move between dancing, reflecting and talking.
Suitable for professional dance artists and advanced contemporary dance students.
Booking: Email jennytraynor14@gmail.com

KEYNOTE PRESENTATIONS
14.00 | Spines melting and muscles bleeding | Ella Clarke, choreographer and academic
Ella’s presentation explores performance practice through the lens of figurative language and the often-overlooked role of movement in theatre. She argues that figurative language isn’t just a tool for description, but a way of accessing and generating new meaning through deeper, lived engagement with the world, not simply abstract reflection. This idea aligns with how movement-based practices work: they’re rooted in the body and experience, which can make them feel out of place in a theatre culture dominated by text and logic. Yet, they must still operate within that system. During the facilitation, transmission, or creation of dance or movement, articulation via language therefore presents challenges.

Ella’s research focuses on the marginalisation of choreographers and movement directors in literary theatre, pointing to fundamental differences in practice as the root cause of this oversight. She argues that:

Movement is meaning-making: A dancer’s body speaks directly to the audience, imprinting imagery and emotion through motion rather than language. It’s not just a visual display but an embodied form of communication—a ”moving” and ”animated” picture (Gallini, 1748, p. 96).

Words and movement are inseparable: While movement resists the dominance of language in theatre, it also depends on it. Language is central to teaching, directing, and transmitting physical work—and it too is rooted in the body.

Phenomenology and practice collide with literary traditions: Movement-based work leans toward a phenomenological, experiential approach to meaning, which can clash with the logocentric and hierarchical tendencies of literary theatre. Yet, this tension highlights the need for both to coexist in productive dialogue.

14.20 | 5 Attempts with 3 Pauses of indeterminate length, a certain amount of Movement and a few Words | Mary Nunan, Independent Dance Artist
She will set them up to bump into each other. Movement and Words. Maffle them. Baffle them. Both. So they have to find each other and the audience. Afresh. In this Presentation.

15.00 – 15.45 | Panel discussion
Ella Clarke, Mary Nunan, Magdalena Hylak, Fearghus Ó Conchúir, Mufutau Yusuf and Colin Dunne.
Moderated by Megs Morley

15.45 | Film Screening | AFTERMATH by Magdalena Hylak and Lionel Kasparian 
Performers, Choreographers, Educators, and Enthusiasts are invited to join this exploration of how dance performs, practices, and persists.

Networking and dialogue

Additionally, the Black Box Theatre will host a captivating Triple Bill of evening performances, showcasing new works by Magda Hylak, Fearghus Ó Conchúir, and Mufutau Yusuf.
For further details and to book tickets, visit www.tht.ie

Biographies

Colin Dunne, Olivier Award nominee, is a traditional Irish dance artist who works across dance, music, and theatre performance platforms in Ireland and internationally. His critically acclaimed solo works Out of Time and CONCERT have been presented at prestigious venues and festivals including Baryshnikov Arts Centre NYC, Barbican London, and Biennale de la Danse Lyon.

Ella Clarke is a classically trained dancer, choreographer, lecturer, and academic researcher working in the fields of Contemporary Dance, and Movement direction and training for actors. She is a graduate of the Perm State Choreographic Institute, Russia, and has performed and choreographed internationally in classical, contemporary and post-modernist genres for theatre, opera, film and dance.

Having completed an MA in Ethnochoreology at University of Limerick in 2019, she is studying for a doctoral degree at the Drama Department, Trinity College Dublin (2021-2025) as a Research Ireland scholarship recipient, with research revolving around the role of choreographers and movement directors working in text-based productions at the Abbey Theatre since 1924.

Ella’s choreographies include Irish Times Irish Theatre Award winning productions for Loose Canon Theatre Company and The Gate Theatre, with further work for The Abbey Theatre, Peacock Theatre, Siren Productions, Myriad Dance Company, Wexford Festival Opera, Project Arts Centre, Little Wolf Productions, Ella Clarke Choreography and Barnstorm Theatre Company, for work with whom she was nominated for Best Movement Direction at the Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards 2020/21.

Her work as a performer includes productions for CoisCéim Dance Theatre, Ciotóg Dance Company, Dance Theatre of Ireland, 2nd Nature (AUS), Scottish Dance Theatre (UK), Liz Roche Dance Co, Siren Productions, New Balance Dance Company, The Abbey Theatre, Justine Doswell and Genesis Collective.

She has been a member of faculty at Technological University Dublin Conservatoire (Drama) since 2001.

Magdalena Hylak is a dance artist who until recently was based in the west of Ireland. Born in Poland, she studied cultural studies, including theatre and dance, at University of Wroclaw and began her professional career in 2011. Since then she has worked on over 170 performances across 12 countries with dance artists including Michael Keegan Dolan, Liz Roche, Lea Anderson, Ríonach Ní Néill, Catherine Young Dance, Emma Martin and Akiko Kitamura before touring nationally and internationally with John Scott, Irish Modern Dance Theatre, and with Nacera Belaza.

Mary Nunan is a dance artist. Her curiosity about the raw materials of movement and questions about what dance is (is not) are currently the driving force in her practice. Throughout her career she has created a substantial body of critically acclaimed solo and ensemble choreographies, toured to venues at home and abroad. Markers of time passing include: choreographer, performer with Dublin Contemporary Dance Theatre (1981-86), Founder Artistic Director of Daghdha Dance Company (1988-1999), Course Director of the MA Contemporary Dance Performance, Irish World Academy of Music and Dance UL (1999-2016), Visiting guest Lecturer at the RCA London (2016-17). Since 2017 she has been working as an independent choreographer, collaborator, performer, writer. She is a member of ‘The Parsley Collective’ a group of Limerick-based dance artists. They are currently Dancers-in-Residence in Dance Limerick. Mary earned her PhD Middlesex University 2013). She has published a number of peer-reviewed articles on choreographic process and performance.

Fearghus Ó Conchúir is a choreographer and dance artist. Frequently collaborating with experts from across and beyond the arts, he makes film and live performances for audiences and artists to build communities together. He’s currently co-leading a dance programme with Micro Rainbow that he initiated as part of The Casement Project (2016) to support LGBTQI refugees and asylum seekers. From 2018-2020, he was Artistic Director of National Dance Company Wales. His work for the Company toured across Wales as well as being presented in Japan as part of Wales’ cultural programme for the 2019 Rugby World Cup. He was appointed to the Arts Council of Ireland in 2018 and was Deputy Chair in 2019-2023. He was Chair of the UK Dance Network 2021-2023. He is Curator of the Step Up Programme. His recent performance includes Tearmann Aiteach/Queer Sanctuary created and performed with Isabella Oberländer.

Mufutau Yusuf is a Nigerian-born Irish choreographer, performer, teacher, and curator, living between Brussels and Ireland. Born in Lagos, he moved to rural Country Meath, outside of Dublin, Ireland, at age nine with his father and discovered contemporary dance at sixteen through the Dublin Youth Dance Company. Raised in a culture where movement and dance are integral to its heritage, Yusuf was drawn to the opportunities in Europe, where he saw the potential to cultivate a professional career in dance.

He later trained at the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance, and since graduating in 2016, has performed with leading companies such as Wim Vandekeybus/Ultima Vez in Belgium and Liz Roche Company, Irish Modern Dance Theatre, Emma Martin/United Fall, and Catherine Young Dance in Ireland. Currently, he is a choreographer-in-residence with Ireland’s National Dance Company, Luail.