Experimental Circus Showcase

The Experimental Circus Award is a new initiative directed by artist Emily Aoibheann to facilitate intellectually engaged, experimental circus practice among Irish and Ireland based artists. Awardees of the Experimental Circus Award will showcase new performance pieces being developed as part of the award, through bursary and residency opportunities. At this special exhibit of new work, audiences can expect to find the physicality of circus arts combined with conceptual, material and design experiments. The artist schedule for the evening includes work by Monika Palova, Seve Feathers and Aoife Kavanagh.

Experimental Circus Award 2022/2023

The Experimental Circus Award is a new initiative directed by artist Emily Aoibheann to facilitate intellectually engaged, experimental circus practice among Irish and Ireland based artists. The award recognises the authority of the artist as distinct from institutional, government and corporate authority. The award centres peer-to-peer and artist led exchanges, bursary and residency opportunities in partnership with a variety of arts venues including: Dance Ireland and Project Arts Centre, Dublin; Courthouse Arts Centre and Mermaid Arts Centre, Wicklow. The pilot programme was funded by the Arts Council and emerged from Creation Aerial Research and Ideas Studio (2014 - 2020).

The artists in receipt of the award in 2022/ 2023 are Monika Palova, Seve Feathers and Lunar Tzu a.k.a Aoife Kavanagh. Two artists are Wicklow based and two are Dublin based.

Seve Feathers: Fleshed

"Fleshed" is a mesmerising and poetic exploration of the imaginational and emotional space emerging from the relations between a body and a piece of fabric: lines are blurred; the fabric and the body move and move each other. They balance and contort according to the rules of an eerie world in a committed quest for unexpected images that offer themselves to the audience's imagination for interpretation and associations. "Fleshed" gently invites the audience to share a compelling journey of renewed curiosity for the seemingly mundane, an unsuspected opening into the depths of a world of oneiric qualities where the intangible becomes visible.

Monika Palova: Snow Little Woman

Within the realm of artistic creation, an old new performance unfolds: "Snow Little Woman." Monika delves into the depths of her Slovak roots, intertwining the threads of her cherished homeland and customs. Having voluntarily departed and spent a lifetime in Ireland, her journey emerges as a poignant ode to connection. Drawing from her ancestral lineage and the profound impact of historical events on one family’s history, she employs the dance of aerial rope, hair suspension, and the alluring attire of traditional Slovak garments. Infused with the echoes of her grandmothers' voices, captured in tender recordings, this performance becomes a mesmerizing tapestry of heritage, resonating with the timeless reflection of identity and belonging.

Aoife Kavanagh: Codraisc

Drawing inspiration from the disintegration of meaning, digital exposure, response triggers and the idea of happiness, Codrasic is a new work of multidisciplinary transmedia circus art by artist Aoife Kavanagh. Through the vulnerable expression of an extraneous body, the artist explores the delicate dance for balance in a world of altered meaning. Through the digital experience, the physical body’s chemistry, neurology, psychology, sociology and physiology are changing. Set amidst the remnants of meaning, the artist struggles with her redundant body and looks for a way to return to the vast beauty of the natural world, the joy of being known to only a few, the alchemy of the physical body and the forgotten experience of being content

About the programme director:

Award winning artist Emily Aoibheann, uses aerial dance and circus arts as tools to explore contemporary ideas of all kinds: philosophical; social; ecological; historical; magical. Her varied background and practice lead to highly creative and collaborative integrations of multiple art forms. The work is often realised with a broad artistic and technical team, necessary to realise the significant ambition, scale and quality of productions. Emily's recent work concerns bodies without context and 'dances of dissolution'; transience and trace making; the heart and spine; presence, embeddedness, dwelling, and death.

Her work in 2022/ 2023 is supported by the Arts Council, Screen Ireland/ Animation Ireland, as a Markievicz Award recipient, Fingal County Council, Dance Ireland, Project Arts Centre, Courthouse Arts Centre and Mermaid Arts Centre.