2024 Edition | PROGRAMME ANNOUNCEMENT

The Abbey stage will be home to three powerful productions:

Fuelled by the potent physicality of hip hop, Botis Seva’s BLKDOG (UK) was Winner of the Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production in 2019. With a pounding and brooding score that includes a mixture of original music and spoken words, the work is a beautifully brutal commentary on how the youth of today navigate a world not built for them. Through haunting childhood memories and adult trauma, it questions how we can fight through our vices to find a sense of peace. BLKDOG is for everyone; those who have faced trauma, dealt with grief, or witnessed loved ones grappling with depression and loss.

Taking street dance, hip hop battles, and club culture as their base, the ten performers in Marco da Silva Ferreira’s CARCAÇA (Portugal) dismantle and then reclaim traditional European folk dances that have been frozen in time, resistant to change. This dynamic, joyful choreography is a rapturous and rebellious confrontation as tradition and contemporary collide, creating a colourful and vibrant exploration of identity. With the dancers’ complex and percussive footwork mixing with live music to create a unique soundtrack, the choreography accelerates, urging us towards resilience, togetherness, and true equality.

Dublin Dance Festival is delighted to present acclaimed Irish choreographer, Emma Martin for the first time at the Abbey Theatre. A sweaty love letter to dance in all its forms, Night Dances is an exhilarating celebration of dance culture – from clubs to competitions to ceremonies. Performed to pounding beats with atmospheric lighting, it opens with a solo and ups the pace as a young dance troupe launches into a ferocious routine of kicks, flips and cartwheels. A brief respite is offered up in a second solo that magnifies every movement, before surging to a close with unbridled fervour.

Project Arts Centre will host productions by three hugely exciting artists during the festival:

Rooted in its historic anger, raw emotion and hard-hitting physicality, Krump is re-envisioned in Cellule by French choreographer Nach. Immersed in projections of photographic imagery of black activists, the magnetic Nach begins an astonishing metamorphosis, giving form and life to the figures that inhabit her – woman, man, shadow, animal. Through her personal and liberated expression of Krump, a dance-style which emerged from the social tensions and riots in Los Angeles, Nach deploys her choreographic grace, honesty, and vulnerability, to create a captivating self-portrait.

Emerging choreographic talent Mufutau Yusuf (Ireland) premieres his highly anticipated new work, Impasse, a compelling exploration of ethnicity, identity, and the experience of the Black diaspora. An attempt to understand the politics of the Black body in a contemporary western society, Impasse interrogates notions of representation, misrepresentation, and the lack of representation. Challenging the historical racial projections of Blackness – crudeness, threat, sexuality, rage and immorality – two performers unveil its power, grace, sensuality, tenderness, intelligence and love in a celebration of the self-determination of Black bodies.

Radical French choreographer, Olivier Dubois, hailed as one of the twenty-five best dancers in the world by Dance Europe Magazine, extends a rare and personal invitation to the audience to become co-creators of a wildly entertaining participatory performance, My Body of Coming Forth by Day. Having earned resounding acclaim both as a choreographer and as a performer, Dubois’s latest work is an intimate solo that marks the culmination of his extraordinary career to date. Cued by the spectators, Dubois revisits some of the sixty shows from his rich repertoire as a dancer and choreographer. Each vignette, uniquely and spontaneously reinvented, takes on new life to unveil different facets of the performer in this exuberant and avant-garde odyssey.

Project Arts Centre will also be home to DanceScapes. Celebrating hip hop culture and French Irish exchange, the events of DanceScapes 2024 are hosted by trailblazing French hip hop artists from Collectif FAIR-E, and mark the first time that Breaking will be included in the Olympic Games (Paris 2024). For those aged 18+, DanceScapes – Hip Hop Nights will be a chance to dance the night away with talented artists from France and Ireland under one roof - raw talent, pulsating beats, slick moves, live DJs, exhilarating cyphers and showcases, and hip hop of all styles. Earlier in the day for dancers of all levels aged 15+ there will be a DanceScapes – Workshop with Collectif FAIR-E, a chance to dive into the dynamic world of hip hop, its iconic moves, and electrifying beats.

At The Ark, a whimsical space traveller invites us to embark on a galactic adventure and see the world around us with fresh eyes in Cometa by Roser López Espinosa & Vorpommern tanzt an (Spain/Germany). In this joyful, interactive dance show for children aged 6+, we discover the wonders of gravity, the incredible speed of light and the power of empathy. Bursting with playfulness and creativity, Cometa is a celebration of joy, connection, and shared adventure.

Taking place outdoors during National Biodiversity Week and inspired by Dublin’s canals and their surroundings, Bench #3 is the latest dance piece in a series performed on the banks of the canals across the city. A collaborative project between award-winning CoisCéim Dance Theatre (Ireland) and Waterways Ireland, Bench is a collection of artworks that celebrates everyday places as creative spaces through vibrant choreographic commissions and short live performances by distinctive local dance artists. With free outdoor performances in Grand Canal Dock over the last two days of the festival, Bench #3 is an invitation to take a breath and discover dance at a bench by the water – a place to rest, a point to meet, a space to dream.

This is it | 8 dance portraits, an innovative series of short films by Laura Murphy Dance (Ireland) will be screened at the Irish Film Institute. The worth of a dancer’s career is often measured by the time spent in the limelight. Yet a dancer’s experience of their career extends beyond the stage into the personal realm. Collaborating with filmmaker Pato Cassinoni, animator Alan Early and composer Irene Buckley, Murphy presents a multifaceted exploration of eight women in dance in Ireland: Jean Butler, Alicia Christofi Walshe, Lisa Cliffe, Finola Cronin, Joan Davis, Katherine O'Malley, Mary Nunan and Angie Smalis, creating a unique living archive of untold stories.

Already announced, Asia’s leading contemporary dance company Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan is returning to Bord Gáis Energy Theatre to open the 2024 Dublin Dance Festival with the exquisite and fantastical world of 13 Tongues. With astounding control, fluidity and grace, the Cloud Gate dancers conjure a thrilling representation of the sights, sounds and vitality of Taipei’s oldest district Bangka. Beginning and ending with the sound of a single hand bell, the evocative musical score interweaves Taiwanese folk songs, Taoist chant, and electronica to bring us on a journey from the ancient to the contemporary. Amidst light projections of brilliant colours, shapes, and images, the dancers create an immersive and exhilarating representation of Bangka’s bustling street life, bridging generations of behaviours and beliefs.

During DDF2024, dancers and dance students will be able to take master classes with festival artists, while programmers and audiences alike will have a chance to discover new works by emerging choreographers with the Originate Programme. The Originate – Performance Showcase at Project Arts Centre will include extracts from recent choreographies and new works-in-development from Luke Murphy, Amir Sabra and Junk Ensemble, with Croí Glan, John Scott Dance and Off the Rails Dance presenting new works and creative projects as part of Originate – Artist Pitches at Dance House on Foley Street.

Customers booking tickets online have the option to make a donation to Médecins Sans Frontières Ireland to provide humanitarian support in Gaza.

TICKETS

Book Online:
Tickets available online from 6^th March

DDF Box Office
Book in person or over the phone at our Festival Box Office from 3^rd May.
Festival House, 12 East Essex Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2
+353 1 673 0660

Dublin Dance Festival acknowledges the generous support of:
Principal Funder: The Arts Council of Ireland/An Chomhairle Ealaíon
Supported by: Dublin City Council
Media Partners: RTÉ Supporting the Arts, The Irish Times
Accommodation Partner: The Castle Hotel
Cultural Partners: AC/E PICE, Big Pulse Dance Alliance, Creative Europe, Culture Ireland, European Festivals Association (EFA) – European Union, Embassy of France in Ireland, Institut Français, Taipei Representative Office in Ireland
Programme Partners: Abbey Theatre, Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, CoisCéim Dance Theatre, Dance Ireland, Irish Film Institute, The Ark
Supporter: Dunne & Crescenzi
Design Partner: aad

For further media information please contact Stephanie Dickenson stephaniedickenson12@gmail.com | 087 993 7650.

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