Irish Modern Dance Theatre Presents

Dances for Inside and Outside

Join a thrilling and fast moving dance explosion of 8 stunning dancers from Ireland, France, Poland, Ethiopia and Nigeria, unleashed in a live performance to celebrate life, athleticism and joy.

A cycle of dances for our times, created by John Scott and the determined dancers of Irish Modern Dance Theatre, Dances for Inside and Outside is a coming together of vastly different, virtuosic dancers, searching for safe space and trying to be together. They are celebrating life and searching for joy, despite the limitations imposed by Covid-19. Dances for Inside and Outside was made using social distancing and the limits of bodies being together in a space as a movement inspiration.

The work embodies what we have all been through and what our reality is now. There is a vital physicality and necessity in how the dancers interact together, mixing joy and fear and trying to be safe. Dances for Inside and Outside premiered online in 2020 and was subsequently shown at Philadelphia Dance Projects. Duration 45 minutes.

Irish Modern Dance Theatre, founded in 1991 by choreographer John Scott, is one of the most original and responsive dance companies working in Ireland today. A Dublin-based ensemble, Scott and major international artists create distinctive dance works with diverse casts, mixing virtuosic Irish and international dancers with African and Middle Eastern refugees and torture survivors. Works include ‘Lear’, Southbank Centre, London, New York Live Arts, Herald Angel Award Winner, Edinburgh Fringe, ‘Inventions’, Kilkenny Arts Festival and Dublin Dance Festival, 'Actions’, Kennedy Center, Washington, ‘Fall and Recover’ La MaMa, New York - all recognised for their intelligence, honesty and humanity. IMDT's work crosses disciplines, subverts expectations of dance and dancers, finding new ways to explore contemporary issues.

Dances for Inside and Outside is a cycle of dances, large and small, created for our times Choreography: John Scott

Lighting Design: Gearóid Ó Hallmhuráin | Re-light Síofra Nic Liam

Dancers: Diarmuid Armstrong, Ashley Chen, Dylan Holly, Magdalena Hylak, Favour Odusola, Rebecca Reilly, Sarah Ryan, Mintesinot Wolde

Photography: Ewa Figaszewska

Music: BLACKFISH (JG Everest and Joel Pickard) | Sixty Forty by Nico

Image credit: Ewa Figaszewska

‘The sheer athleticism on display is impressive’

The Scotsman

‘There is a feeling that the twenty-one-plus years of Scott's disparate choreographic life are being distilled into a single and singular vision of what it means to dance and what it means to live’

Michael Seaver, The Irish Times

‘Ireland’s dance landscape has been given a splash of colour by iconoclast John Scott, spearheading Irish Modern Dance Theatre, a group which has already become something of a national institution ….Scott also addresses the details of aesthetic, social and spatial hierarchy ….words and gestures somewhere between Beckett, Chaplin and Monty Python’

Thomas Hahn/tanz magazine, Germany