Session Colin Dunne & Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui

About

Witness leading traditional Irish dance artist, Colin Dunne and Olivier Award-winning Flemish-Moroccan choreographer and dancer, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, perform together on the Abbey Stage. Commissioned for the 15th edition of Dublin Dance Festival, Session is the culmination of a three-year collaboration.

This is a rare opportunity to see a performance by Cherkaoui, an exceptional dance artist who fuses eclectic influences including martial arts, hip-hop, Kathak and jazz into his unique choreographic style. In Session, these two diverse performers draw from the rich rhythmical and sonic aspects of Dunne’s traditional Irish dance to discover their relational possibilities through the exploration of sound. The lines between movement and music, seeing and listening become a source of play, as they create new modes of sound-making, ranging from the graceful to the absurd.

They are joined on stage by composer Michael Gallen and musician Soumik Datta. Gallen's score interweaves a diversity of sources, from percussive dance to sean-nós ornamentation, into a rich tapestry of sound featuring overlapping pianos and strings, electroacoustic textures and polyphonic choral performance.