Guest Writer Number 1: Environmentalist Anja Murray

Our first guest writer on the festival blog will be Anja Murray. Anja is an environmental scientist, ecologist and advocate for nature who is actively pushing public opinion and policy towards a better understanding of our need for a healthy natural environment. She works through means as varied as legal and policy instruments, television, walks and talks, art installations, and community groups. She is also an expert presenter on the RTÉ television series Eco Eye, a documentary series that explores solutions to current environmental challenges.

Anja chose Deep Dish by Austrian choreographer Chris Haring as her show to respond to from the festival programme:

The show looks like an indulgent feast of decadence and crazed consumption. While it looks like fun, I suspect there is a morbid underbelly. To me it resonated immediately with our societal frenzy of consumption and the internal and external imbalances that this gives rise to.

Having seen the show myself two years ago, I can vouch for this reading. While Deep Dish is an amazing spectacle, featuring innovative use of live film, it's also perhaps increasingly relevant in these environmentally precarious times for its investigation of these themes of consumption and decay.

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