IVEAGH GARDENS - in the company of trees - solo and duet

Fiona Quilligan - Choreographer | Director

Ed Bennett - Composer - Magnetic

Tom Adams - Composer - Reaction to dancing, Particle V1 Light and Shadow

Anderson de Souza, Olwen Grindley - Dancer

Fiona Quilligan - Camera and edit production

Set in the Iveagh Gardens among the trees that form a natural amphitheatre. The dancers explore a state of physical ease and freedom from the restriction and express the joy of dancing in autumnal light in November 2020. Contemplations on our relationship with nature - whether urban or country landscapes we experience through dance how much they enrich all of our lives and spirit during this pandemic.

I worked closely with Anderson de Souza and Olwen Grindley in continuing to create dances throughout 2020. I am grateful to composer Ed Bennett for his atmospheric piece Magnetic for the solo and to composer Tom Adams for three tracks for the duet - Reaction to dancing, Berlin 2am, Particle V1 Light and Shadow - (aptly named as the dancers are illuminated as they pass through the shadows cast by the branches of these beautiful trees at the Iveagh Gardens. As the bells ring out towards the end of the duet the dancers are given a grace time to finish up and so the dance continues. Let's hope that next Spring 2021 we can “ring out the bells for perfect harmony ” as Cohen sang, for dance, theatre and music to be reborn on stage. Of course he also sang – it's closing time – but we would need the pubs to reopen for that chorus!

COVID DANCE | SOLSTICE ARTS CENTRE BY FIONA QUILLIGAN

The 2020 Summer Solstice weekend should have seen the premiere performance of Fiona Quilligan's new work 'Ancestor' at Solstice Arts Centre, which was, of course, cancelled along with all performances across Ireland and the globe. During Zoom conversations, Fiona and the dancers thought it would be important to mark the performance week of Ancestor with some offering online. I proposed three solos for Justine, Andy, and Olwen in response to COVID climate with their own signature movement along with my choreographic material. Quickly images of hand and mouth gesture, elbows gripped in worry an empty handshake emerged.

I decided to work from some of the carvings from Knowth’s burial chamber; spirals and circles which would be a good context to place each dancer in their own circle. They would be approx. 6 feet in diameter and scribed on the sand. So very COVID friendly.

Filmed at physical distance under an expansive blue sky on Poolbeg beach in waist-high wild pink valerian and spidery yellow Charlock plants which grow happily in sandy soil, the Mid-Summer Solstice COVID Dances embody a sense of isolation, loss, and disorientation during this time of virus, but also of resistance and passion to renewal to dance in a COVID Climate.

"We must be brave and venture forth strongly like the doctors and other front line workers who put themselves at risk many of whom died while treating patients. So we present these dance COVID Dances in solidarity to all those feeling loss" - Fiona Quilligan

Choreographer|Producer - Fiona Quilligan

Composer Ed Bennett, Syzygy Quartet - 'sometimes things fall apart', Waves and Loops .

Performers - Justine Cooper, Anderson de Souza and Olwen Grindley

Camera: Kevin Mcfeeley

Supported by Solstice Arts Centre / The Arts Council of Ireland

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Olwen Grindley - Covid dance solo, chor	5
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WINDOW WOMAN | Smock Alley 2018

by Fiona Quilligan

The inspiration for this work was prompted by the memory of the Irish sculptor James McKenna while helping him to install his work an Grianan at Fernhill.

He had gathered a small group to assist him with the rigorous job of lifting his female figures into the canopy of trees. I remember being daunted when he put Zelda and I in charge of the pulley rope as the figures were drawn up.

Recently I began to reimagine his sublime figures An Lánúin (the couple), Dúil (longing) and Miss Geraldine Square in movement. Drawing from both the sensual and powerful aspects of these warrior women whose strength seemed to resonate with the struggles of women today.

Often I find myself making objects or preparing material for the stage design. I began dyeing wood shavings the colour red and wrote a number of texts about McKenna. The act of pouring this red material on stage draws the image, text and film together as the sculptural bodies grow into a ritual dance.

I am delighted to collaborate with composer David Collier - his score Smacht unfolds as the dancers emerge through these sculptural forms into movement.

“Like fragments strewn among ancient columns you built your figures limb upon limb, stone upon stone assembling the female anatomy of Miss Geraldine Square”.Text Fiona Quilligan

Choreographer Director:

Fiona Quilligan

Composer: David Collier

Dancers: Justine Cooper

Zelda Francesca

Olwen Grindley

Lucia Kickham

Yuliya Prokhorova

Lighting Design:

Sharon Bagnall

Costume: Denise Assas

Voices: Maria Fernandez,

Mariana Saad, Brian Bourke,

Lucia Kickham,

Zelda Francesca

"Tonight we went to see the wonderful newly written performance of dance Window Woman In Smock Alley Theatre. We sat on rows, as tho’ in the Colosseum, looking on at the action down below, as the dancers slowly and silently echoed the movement of horses dancing towards a doomed fate. This was the first act of Fiona Quilligan’s piece, Window Woman, which was inspired by the work of the renowned Irish sculptor James McKenna, whose rough-hewn wooden horses and warriors are recreated by six wonderful dancers, augmented by intriguing props and vivid costumes. Music is by David Collier, whose sensitive collaboration matches the quiet, and at times ominous atmosphere. I can say no more without diminishing this extraordinary performance". Patricia Hurl Artistic Director of Damer House Gallery, Roscrea

Justine Cooper and Lucia Kickham in Window Woman - Nurture

CASTS AND CONVERSATIONS 2014

Projects Arts Theatre

by Fiona Quilligan

During 2014 I invited dancers to sit and talk about their lives while I made casts of their feet. As the feet multiplied in number, the richness of their stories echoed in my mind and so the idea for a new dance work Casts and Conversations was born.

Amid these delicate and unique casts on stage, the dancers explore their intertwined relationships with the musicians, as they move closer to the lyrical melodies in step with their desires and passions. "In dynamic rhythm and whirl... letting loose their bodies they fly in their imagination."

‘Quilligan has a rich stock pile of stories’

Director|Choreographer: Fiona Quilligan

Composer|performer: Donal MacErlaine, guitar;

Rory Pierce, cello.

Dancers: Katia Pugni, James Hosty,

Dagmara Jerzak, Lorcan O'Neill,

Joanna Banks (on film)

Lighting: Sarah Jane Shiels

Film Editor: Gareth Atkinson

Photography: Kevin McFeely

Graphic design|programme:

Maria Nilsson Waller




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Katia Pagni with foot casts in Casts and Conversations by Fiona Quilligan.jpg
Dagmara Jerzak, Katia Pagni, Lorcan O'Neill, James Hosty in Casts and Conversati
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Converge Diverge Back Loft 2016

Choreographer Fiona Quilligan and visual artist Paola Catizone

Fiona Quilligan - choreographic note

For converge diverge I was influenced by a visit to the red sea in Egypt where I experiencing swimming with the exotic fish in the coral reef. We also travelled to Mount Sinai one of the oldest Christian sites, where the Pharaohs mined for copper and precious stones. This extraordinary mountain range of pink granite, shale and limestone all thrown up into sharp crystallized formations was tempered by a sense of surveillance as we moved in convoy through checkpoints. When I returned to Dublin I started making the black and white paintings as a context for movement sequences. I was introduced to the music of the Lebanon composer Sami Moufadden by Nigel Wood and this led me to reflect on those who live in conflict in middle eastern countries. Gradually ideas of dispossession - a dance work of solidarity as a testimony to their suffering emerged. It has been fascinating sharing these ideas with Paola and I would like to thank her for her probing intellect, dialogue and support in the studio.

Paola Catizone - artist note

I see the body as the locus of both personal and cultural narratives. Institutional oppression begins with the control of bodies, with the regulation of what Foucault called Biopower. In a time of mass displacement and forced migrations the body can become the last and only home to inhabit, and it is bodies, in revolt, war or natural disasters that perform in the spectacle of our TV news.

For Converge Diverge I have explored the possibility of building an installation that also functions as a stage set in the theatrical sense.

Pas de Chat - 2013

Project Arts Centre

By Fiona Quilligan

Pas de chat portrays the imaginative power of the choreographer.

'I was dreaming of a new work ... if only I could do something as simple as a catwalk and stretch out as it does....and then what? More drama more action'.

Contemplating step and structure, the work unfolds as she embodies fast and slow dance rhythms to a dynamic piano score by Irish composer Elaine Agnew.

'The poetic Pas de Chat illustrates Quilligan's strengths as a choreographer, Throughout there is a conflicting sense of reclaiming the past and also letting it go, summed up in the beautiful final video projection of Quilligan dancing in an old costume in a leaf-strewn park'. Michael Seaver Irish Times

Choreographer|Director: Fiona Quilligan

Composer: Elaine Agnew

Performers: Fiona Quilligan, Lucia Kickham

Lighting Design: Hugh Roche Kelly.

Photography: Lucia Truffarelli

Film: Paula Geraghty

NATURAL ARTIFICE 2015

Soma Contemporary Gallery, Waterford

Pallas Studio, Dublin.

A study of the relationships and discordances between Drawing, Dance Performance and Video Art with visual artist Paola Catizone, choreographer Fiona Quilligan and DJ Nigel Wood.

Performed by: Paola Catizone and Fiona Quilligan

Music Research: Nigel Wood

Photography: Florence Paule

"in a supine manner with a combination of improvised and pre-determined gestures, each making marks with both hands... the bodily movements are more elaborate, flowing and developed, yet the resulting drawing emerges, once again, as a product of pre-determined parameters and without conscious ‘deliberation’.

If the early circular pieces are ‘evidence’ of a durational event, this time we have more the feeling of a ‘mapping’ of movements that are more planned, choreographed and chronological."

Article by Kirstin Simpson - Art In The Contemporary World,

(Kirstin lectures in architecture at Waterford Institute of Technology).

PAPER PYLONS - 2011

Wood Quay Venue

By Fiona Quilligan

Modern engineering meets modern dance in Paper Pylons, a dance work by Choreographer Fiona Quilligan in collaboration with filmmaker Marek Bogacki Staszkiewicz.

Using archive material from the ESB Shannon Scheme at Ardnacrusha (1925) where my father worked as an engineer, the work explores personal and political consequences in a series of duets, film imagery and texts.

"He described the massive scale of the operation, Siemens the contractor's and the size of the turbines

with hundreds of rivets hammered by hand".

Choreographer / Director: Fiona Quilligan

Film / Director: Marek Bogacki

Dancers: Olwen Grindley, Maria Nilsson Waller,

Fiona Quilligan

Music: Working Men for cello and vibraphone

Shostakovich Piano Concerto No 2 in F. Andante

Voice: Peter Duffy, Fiona Quilligan

Lighting: Kevin Smith

Photogpaphy: Marcelo Biglia, Kevin McFeely