IRIS Residency: Galway Dance

Galway Dance, in partnership with Glasgow Life Gaelic Arts and Theatre gu Leòr, are bringing 4 artists together to explore and exchange their practice where intangible cultural heritage intersects with contemporary performance, notably dance.

The exchanges sees Irish – based artists Aneta Dortová and Bernadette Divilly and Scottish – based artists Jack Anderson and Fionnlagh Mac A’ Phiocar work together at Dance Galway, Glasgow CCA and Glasgow Tramway.

Facilitated by Rob Heaslip, the exchange is an initiative to promote cultural exchange across Scotland and Ireland, amplifying I.C.H. within both sectors and seeding relationships between the guest artists.

Parallel to the studio time, both visits to Galway and Glasgow culminate in a one-day symposium, with guest speakers, panel discussions, and sharings by the artists, to delve into and expand upon the lived experiences of artists spanning both contemporary and traditional art forms.

Supported by The Arts Council of Ireland.

About the artists:

Aneta Dortová is a dance artist, choreographer and musician based in Galway.

She began her full time freelance artist journey in 2015 as a busker-dancing on the streets of Galway. She graduated with an MA in Contemporary Dance Performance from the Irish World Academy, University of Limerick in 2022.

Her artistic practice focuses on the relationship between live music and dance and traditional and contemporary dance. Her expertise is in solo step dance traditions of Ireland and percussive dance traditions of the North Atlantic region. Her contemporary dance practice is informed by release technique, improvisation, and contact improvisation. As a performer, she explores movement and choreography as a language and means of communication, enabling honest interactions with audiences. She creates site-specific dance films addressing social issues related to inhabiting space.

She recently received the Arts Council Ireland Bursary Award, Galway City Council Bursary, Macnas Career Development Bursary, Arts Council Ireland Agility Award, Dance Ireland HATCH mentorship Award, and the Lightmoves Festival Student Merit Award.

She co-founded and co-organises a folk music and dance festival FolCon, in Brno, the Czech Republic.

Aneta enjoys collaborations with dance artists and musicians of any genre. She believes in the transformative power of dance and its potential to forge connections within and between communities.

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Bernadette Divilly is an established contemporary dance artist and dance psychotherapist.

The essence of her work is responsive to the continuous present, nourished and informed by her cultural heritage. Her childhood was informed by the intangible aspects of being an Irish catholic whose ancestors had emigrated to Scotland, America and England during the Irish War of Independence and the First World War, leading to generational loss of the Irish language. This has informed her choreography and compositional dance aesthetic, supported by dharma art and influences of body, gender and identity politics expressed mindfully.

Bernadette was a founding member of the LGBTQ+ community in Galway in the 80’s.

Bernadette has been DAR dance artist in residence with Áras Éanna Arts Centre since 2022, researching and developing work in the Gaeltacht community of Inis Oírr, based on new ideas centred on landscape, language and the body. After a period of deep immersion on the island with body, mind and spirit, with focus on heritage, the natural environment and the community rituals of the island, she has been working within and alongside the community evolving her practice Bígí ag Damhsa/BeDance which focuses on mindbody relationship.

Bernadette’s ongoing research and development recently consolidated in the exhibition Síreacht agus Sult, an invitation to know one’s own longings and experiences of satisfaction, embodying one’s own ancestral influences in terms of landscape, language and relationship to place.

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Jack Anderson is a dancer living and working in Glasgow.

A few things that are important to Jack: generous, expansive physicality; emphasising liveness; meaningful connections with people; integrity and empowerment; political consciousness, quietly disrupting hierarchies, radical joy.

Jack works with lots of different people, in different contexts - as a performer, collaborator, facilitator, teacher and maker. He aims to give the same weight, to bring the same rigour and listening and play to all the work that he does.

A big focus of Jack’s work right now is clarifying his voice as an individual artist and defining the physical language(s) he uses to express himself.

Jack grew up doing Irish dancing, and always felt that this dance form - with all its frenetic grace, rhythmic power, restlessness and poise and abandon and edge - somehow aligned so perfectly and fundamentally with who he is as a person. When he went on to train in classical and contemporary dance, after working as a professional Irish dancer for several years, he somehow absorbed the idea that to succeed it would be necessary to suppress or erase his Irish dance background. He is happy to have had the training he’s had, and to have grown into an expansive physicality that equips him for a breadth and depth of work and creativity. But now Jack is trying to dismantle, unravel and reconcile the ways that contemporary and traditional dance relate to each other in his body and in his approach to work.

Looking back, moving forwards.

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Fionnlagh Mac A’ Phiocar’s interpretation of his native, Hebridean Culture, is regarded as a breath of fresh air – while being firmly rooted in the tradition he grew up in. A native, 23-year-old Gàidhlig speaker from the Isle of North Uist, in the Outer Hebrides, Fionnlagh has been immersed in Traditional Music all his life.

Fionnlagh has been described as one of the pioneers of the Scottish Smallpipe, a set of bellows blown bagpipes related to the Highland Bagpipe, but softer in sound, and is accompanied by drones tuned to different harmonics to create a hypnotising sound.

Fionnlagh also regularly plays with Sarah Hanniffy, A violist from Galway. This innovate fusion inspires new life into the old traditions that each member has grown up with - music which has been handed down both orally in Irish and Hebridean Gàidhlig cultures. The duo will take to the studio this year to record "The Solace From There".

Fionnlagh has recently taken the Smallpipes into a different creative space with his new ensemble The Sòlás Collective, which was launched in August 2024.

Fionnlagh combines his playing with Gàidhlig song, to create contrasting textures, which he weaves together in performance to create a euphonic, visceral sound which washes over audiences.

When he’s not playing pipes, Fionnlagh is making them! Learning the craft under esteemed maker Ross Calderwood of Lochalsh Smallpipes, Fionnlagh has recently moved into his own workshop space in Glasgow, where he combines his experiences as both maker & player to produce a bespoke, unique, & personal instrument.

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Within his professional practice Rob Heaslip (Exchange Facilitator) works internationally as a choreographer, dancer, movement director and teacher. He creates his own ensemble work as well as collaborative works, spanning dance theatre, live performance, installation, and dance-on-screen.

Prior to beginning his contemporary training, Rob was a member of The National Folk Theatre of Ireland. He earned a BA in Languages and Cultural Studies as well as a MA in Contemporary Performance from The Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at The University of Limerick, Ireland. He later completed his professional training at The Scottish School of Contemporary Dance, graduated in 2008 and has been contributing to the creative sector ever since.

Rob’s works centres on ritual. Somewhere between Contemporary Dance and Folk Theatre he is telling stories about people, how they think, move and act amongst each other. He is a strong and active advocate for the Gaelic identities of Ireland and Scotland, their communities, heritage, languages and customs.

Rob’s work has been presented in Ireland, U.K., U.S.A., Sweden, Spain, Germany and China, with highlights including The Made In Scotland Showcase at Edinburgh Fringe, Tanzmesse Dusseldorf, Dublin Dance Festival, AGITART, and Dance International Glasgow.

Key works produced include the award-winning Water & Man, Strawboys, ENDLING, FREAGRA | A Blurred Expanse, You and Me, and You, Wunderbar and MEITHEAL.