Oona Doherty Intensive - reflective blogs
by Lesley Howard & Niamh O'Loughlin
This month Lesley Howard & Niamh O'Loughlin took part in the Oona Doherty intensive at the Mac Arts Centre in Belfast.
During the intensive participants learned ideas and material from Oona’s new show, Navy Blue. Participants worked with balletic form, flocking and ‘strings’ a form of sporadic chaos and submission.
Both Lesley and Niamh wrote a reflective blog about their experiences.
Lesely Howard
I recently took part in an intensive with artist Oona Doherty, over in Belfast. It was my first time visiting Belfast in 10 years, I was super interested in all the street art, murals, and history of the City. As part of the intensive, we learned rep from Oona's work 'Navy Blue' as well as lots of improvisation exploration and flocking. It was such an amazing feeling being surrounded by so many other artists all feeding off the same energy. I really enjoyed the physical aspect of the intensive, pushing myself beyond 'dance' and beyond the point of exhaustion. What happens when we forget the dance training and actually FEEL something? This is definitely something I am going to apply to my own practice, when am I feeling and when am I dancing, can this be balanced? I also really liked Oona's delivery of the workshop, there were always ways to adapt to your body, celebrating the differences in everyone. I am definitely feeling inspired
Niamh O'Loughlin
“You are enough. You are already enough.”
Was how it began.
“Let’s have fun!”
Was how it continued.
We danced with honey, sugar, salty gravy and ketamine under our fingernails and concrete in our throat.
“What are you telling your nervous system while you’re doing this?” she asked. Nothing good mostly.
A couple of days with Oona Doherty and I’m struck by how much you can do with the movement ideas that interest you. And wow I want a chance to make a big, epic piece with 12 dancers from mine.
It was a little too easy to connect with my existential dread in movement as requested by Doherty. It was right there, a tiny slice below the surface. Dancing it relieved it some. I think at one point we achieved euphoria too.
More personally as an Irish person I gained a huge amount of knowledge about the current spread and mentality of the dance scene on the island. The things I noticed were:
That everyone has spread out. I was dancing with people who live in Sligo, Leitrim, Longford, Galway and other places (there were also people living in France, London, Belgium…). The scene in no longer Dublin-centric because what artist can afford to live in Dublin?
Everyone living in Ireland and abroad with an Irish link are holding their breath for this new dance strategy to deliver and to see what this new full-time company means. Can it keep people (such as Oona herself) in the country or even bring some of us home?
I think Navy Blue can easily be applied to the current feeling in the arts in Scotland. Things are “going to be shit” but I think we need to continue doing them anyways.
“I CAN! I CAN! I CAN! I CAN! I WILL! I WILL! I WILL! I WILL!”
*Thanks for reading.
I really appreciate it.
You came a long way to read this.
4.5 billion years to read it.*
*lines from Navy Blue played with for the context of this blog.
