1 2 CO MOTION: DANCE & BORDERS Curated by Dr Aoife McGrath, Queens University Belfast WELCOME On behalf of Dance Ireland and Dance Resource Base welcome to Co- We trust you will discover something new and maybe even be Motion: Dance & Borders conference. This is a milestone moment for challenged or refreshed by something arising out of a panel, us all. roundtable, keynote or presentation. Equally important for us is the Dance is at once personal and political, intimate and expansive. It opportunity for our collective communities of dance artists, inspires, delights, confounds, confronts and connects us all. We see colleagues, partners and friends to (re)connect. this at dance events large and small, professional and amateur. We We acknowledge the valuable supports we have received from experience it on our sofa surrounded by family and friends watching Belfast International Arts Festival, Queens University Belfast, and ever popular TV dancing shows. No matter the genre, from ballroom from our respective funders: An Chomhairle Ealaíon and Dublin City to ballet, contemporary to capoeira, traditional to tap, dance moves Council; Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Belfast City Council, in us all and we are the better for it. addition to support from Visit Belfast and Halifax Foundation. Co-Motion is an important and timely moment, celebrating our rich We extend heartfelt thanks to the conference steering committee dance landscape, vibrant dance communities and diverse dance who have generously contributed their time and expertise to making interests. Together with DRB we are delighted to consolidate our Co-Motion: Dance & Borders possible. shared resources and mutual interests to forge a strong working bond on Co-Motion in partnership with curator Dr Aoife McGrath. Dance Ireland and Dance Resource Base. Co-Motion is the result of a joint commitment to partnership, collaboration, critical discourses and creative encounters. Informed danceireland.ie by critical enquiry, Co-Motion is a platform and opportunity to danceresourcebase.org collectively explore, and interrogate, some key themes surrounding the concept(s) of dance & borders. Significantly Co-Motion aims to highlight how an embodied practice can contribute to a better understanding of who we are. Co-Motion: Dance & Borders All-Island Dance Conference, 25 & 26 October 2019 3 CURATOR’S NOTE Co-Motion is a gathering For the first time, an all-island conference brings together dance borders? What facilitates or hinders co-motion across them? How might practitioners, researchers, educators, curators, policy makers, industry danced “commotion” create interventions into the stasis of political professionals and supporters to create an inclusive platform for putting inaction? At junctures of threatened division, how might dance function as a thought into motion about how we move together. That this gathering is site of connection, collaboration, and movement? Or conversely, how does happening at a moment of threatened division is significant. Co-Motion dance practice highlight boundaries, limits, fractures, or immobility? responds to a critical moment both on the island of Ireland and globally, in which the hardening of international borders raises questions about the The Co-Motion contributors have responded to these provocations in rich operation and experience of borders in dance communities. and diverse ways. Their individual panel presentations, performances and Considering the artist as citizen, the conference brings critical attention to workshops highlight some of the most urgent issues for dance at this complexities of border interrelations in a contemporary moment of moment: the future of dance education in a climate of diminishing support precarity and flux. With Brexit looming and its implications for the for the arts; the need for inclusivity of all corporealities, especially those on international border on this island still uncertain, dance’s fundamental the margins of society; environmental concerns and danced action for relationship with movement and stasis makes it particularly suited to change; the impact of trauma on individuals and communities, and the tackling questions of mobility, migration, and movement across borders. possibilities for healing afforded by dance; the need to nurture and support Dance also affords a unique insight into how different kinds of borders dance networks and opportunities for collaboration; the power of danced operate in the broadest sense across a spectrum of embodied political, interventions in politically contested borderlands. aesthetic and socio-cultural understandings. To mention but a few… Co-Motion is a questioning Co-Motion is a celebration Co-Motion’s roundtables provide a platform for every delegate to Dance practice on this island has a continued need to struggle for participate in discussion about the most critical issues for dance practice on recognition and support. The importance of acknowledging the lived the island of Ireland and beyond. Keynote and guest speakers bring experience of dance practitioners working with/through/against different expertise from a broad range of dance organisations, professions, disciplines kinds of borders is at the heart of this conference. Yet, there is also much to and backgrounds, creating space for interweaving strands of thought and celebrate; particularly in the creative achievements of dance artists. debating how we might best keep dancing together. The open call for the conference posed a series of questions for response: how do dance communities experience and negotiate different kinds of Co-Motion: Dance & Borders All-Island Dance Conference, 25 & 26 October 2019 4 Providing dance artists with a platform to showcase excerpts of new work, Belfast International Arts Festival Welcome both live and through screenings, is a vital, celebratory element of the programme. Similarly, the collaboration with Belfast International Arts All of us at Belfast International Arts Festival join with our partners, Dance Festival connects the conference with two international dance Ireland, Dance Resource Base and Queen’s University Belfast to welcome you to performances that will bring fresh perspectives and energies to our the first ever all-Ireland dance conference in Belfast. gathering. It’s a great honour and privilege to have practitioners from across the island and special guests from overseas converge on Belfast to share their passion for It has been an honour and a privilege to curate this first all-island dance dance. conference. I hope it will be the first of many more. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the dance communities on this island for their support in Conference’s themes of borders, connections and how to develop and promote bringing the programme together. I would also like to thank the wonderful practices for working together are reflective of BIAF’s own continuing focus on conference steering committee who generously provided their advice and addressing the perceptions and realities of borders on our lives, whether guidance throughout the programming process. physical or conceptual. Contemporary dance practice is central to our annual Special thanks to Paul Johnson, Jane Mooney and Richard Wakely, to all of programme of events and to mark this historic first all island conference, we are the conference volunteers and panel chairs, to the staff of the Crescent Arts presenting a range of great dance across the entire festival, including Pat Centre and Queen’s University Belfast, and to our wonderful conference Kinevane’s Before at The MAC; To Da Bone from (LA)HORDE and Staging Schiele manager, Orla McGrady. from Shobana Jeyasingh Dance at The MAC. In addition, Oona Doherty’s latest group work, Lady Magma will close this 57th festival edition over following Dr Aoife McGrath (Queen’s University Belfast) weekend. Conference Curator Dr Aoife McGrath is a lecturer and Subject Lead in Drama at the School of There has never been a more important time to celebrate and explore the diversity and richness of dance practice across the island and to underscore the Arts, English and Languages, Queen’s University Belfast. After a professional cultural ties that continue to bind us together. dance career in Germany and Ireland, Aoife worked as a choreographer, Welcome to Belfast and enjoy the conference. dance critic, and as Dance Advisor for the Irish Arts Council. Publications include her monograph, Dance Theatre in Ireland: Revolutionary Moves Richard Wakely (Palgrave, 2013), and a co-edited collection (with Dr Emma Meehan, CDaRe, Artistic Director and Chief Executive, Belfast International Arts Festival Coventry), Dance Matters in Ireland: contemporary processes and practices belfastinternationalartsfestival.com (Palgrave, 2018). Recent choreographic work includes Please (NIMHAFF, 2017), Within: Body + Time (Accidental Theatre, 2018) and Let Down (Being Before has been generously supported by the Department of Foreign Affairs Human Festival, Breastival, Northern Ireland Human Rights Festival, 2018). and Trade’s Reconciliation Fund (Government of Ireland) and as part of BIAF’s Aoife is Co-President of the Irish Society for Theatre Research, co-convenor “IN-visible ID-entities” programme strand. (with Prarthana Purkayastha) of the IFTR Choreography and Corporeality To Da Bone has been generously supported by the Institut Francais du Working Group, and a performer/choreographer member of Dance Ireland. Royaume-Uni as part of FranceDance UK. Co-Motion: Dance & Borders All-Island