 Hello, I'm John Scott. I'm the director, founder of Irish Modern Dance Theatre, and you're very welcome to our festival, Dancer from the Dance Festival of Irish Choreography. Dancer from the Dance is a gathering of 32 Irish and Irish identifying choreographers from Ireland and the USA. And it crosses national borders, practices, ethnicities and generations. I'm very, very happy. This is our second edition of the festival. It's a festival that exists in both New York and in Dublin. We were potentially frustrated with the festival this year in realizing it due to the situations around the coronavirus pandemic. But we, Greta Burke, my manager and myself and all our partners and all the choreographers have been in close dialogue and work together to realize the festival, despite any obstacles. And I think it's a testament to the unity of the Irish Dance community and our determination to keep going no matter what. I'm very, very excited. It's a total of 19 events over five days. There were performances, screen dance classes, workshops, and also now tonight's panel talk, which I'm very, very excited about, and I very, very happy to welcome our panelists. And again, we couldn't do this without the support of our sponsors, the Arts Council of Ireland, Culture Ireland, Dublin City Council, Newstalk FM, and our partners, Dance Ireland, the Irish Arts Centre, Dance Limerick, the Culture Irelanders, and Project Arts Centre. So now, one of the things that was very, very important in making the festival in 2019 and in 2020 is our close relationship with our friends in New York, the modern friends, our family, our colleagues, the Irish Arts Centre. And I'd now like to introduce Aidan Connolly, Director of the Irish Arts Centre, to say a few words of welcome and to tell us about the exciting developments happening in Irish Arts Centre, which is going to be a home for the entire Irish Artistic community, a home from home from Ireland to New York. Thank you, Aidan. Thank you, John. Hello, everybody. As John said, I'm Aidan Connolly, Director of Irish Arts Centre. Greetings from New York City. I'm here live from the construction site of the New Irish Arts Centre, which will be an international cultural home, multidisciplinary home here in Hell's Kitchen. For those of you who don't know, Irish Arts Centre has been around since 1972, but really over the last decade, including an important conversation that we had with someone named John Scott just around the corner from here, a beautiful little French café, as part of our artistic consultative process to reimagine what an Irish Arts Centre might be in New York City. What exactly does that mean? And so we are, we are coming more than hundreds of interviews and millions of dollars and one global pandemic later, towards the finish line of that project. And what you see behind me is the fruits of that creativity and that labour. Indeed, you see some of our wonderful construction team working at safe social distances with appropriate PPE to help us realise that dream. So we're thrilled to have the opportunity to be a part of Dancer From the Dance and to continue our dialogue with the artistic community, with the dance community in Ireland and here in New York and across the country. So we thought it would be fun to just give you a glimpse of construction, sort of where things stand. I think we'll have an opportunity to get into a little bit more detail at another time in the festival, but maybe just to offer a glimpse of hope and a sense of the discovery that awaits us on the far side of this very difficult situation for us. We are, we are looking forward. We honour the artists who are a part of Dancer From the Dance and indeed across the range of disciplines that we work with at Irish Arts Centre. We thank all the organisations and funding entities that are coming together to make this festival happen this year. And of course to you all for watching. Have a great festival. Thank you, Aidan. And one of the things that has been really, really important over these difficult months for all of us has been the wonderful complicity and support of the team. I must thank hugely Greta Burke, the company manager of Irish Modern Dance Theatre, who I haven't seen in the flesh since early March, but we are practically married on Zoom and Greta has helped bring the whole festival together with me. I just couldn't do it without her. Also, Michelle Cahill, who is doing amazing work on marketing. Luca Trufarelli, our filmmaker, who's editing the programmes and has been a wonderful artistic accomplice and collaborator. I want to thank Chris Ignacio and Conrad Stanley. Conrad Stanley is our production manager and Chris is our web manager. And also the backup of Justine Doswell, together with, as I said before, our sponsors and our partners, and also the Arts Council. Carl Wallace, the festivals director and Victoria O'Brien, the dance advisor from the Arts Council, and Liz Meany have been very, very helpful and supportive to helping us to keep going with all of this. Now, another very important part of the festival has been the ongoing classes and workshops. So it's not just a festival about performances and showing work, it's also about process and about development. And we're very, very lucky to partner with, with two development agencies with Dance Limerick and with Dance Ireland. I would now like to introduce Sheila Creavy, the chief executive of Dance Ireland, who are running the classes and workshops for us every day this week. And we couldn't do it without any of you. So I'd like to hand it over now to Sheila. Thank you, Sheila. Well, thank you very much. Dance Ireland is absolutely delighted to partner with John Scott and Irish Modern Dance Theatre and dancer from the dance festival. We appreciate the enormity of the task you have undertaken in bringing together this event under such extraordinary circumstances. And we are absolutely really pleased to be doing our best in support of the workshops and the classes, especially when our studios are closed and we're in the process of starting to reopen. We've discovered so many ways of sharing dance of engaging in physical activity whilst apart but still coming together in some way. And you'll see that over this week. Dance Ireland is Ireland's national dance development organization and the representative body for the professional dance community in Ireland. It is at moments like this, when our community gathers to present who we are, when we connect with audiences to share our art. We open up dialogue and debate about what dance is and could be for society that I am most proud to work in support of dance. I am proud to have seen the resilience with which the dance sector has faced the many challenges in recent months. We've been extremely active, we've come together, we've connected, and we've made such extraordinary efforts to share our art. And this is a really great example of this. I want to congratulate everybody involved in dance from the dance festival, and I look forward to a wonderful week ahead. Thank you. Thank you very much Sheila. And one of the things about dancing from the dance festival and the New York connection that's very strong. It began as a result of conversations I had when we were performing at the Harkness Dance Center in the 90s Second Street Y with Catherine Theron. And the idea for the program came from Catherine's curiosity and desire to see more Irish work and to know what was happening in Ireland with Irish choreography. So special thanks to Catherine Theron for starting the seed. Last year we brought 13 choreographers to New York and also to Dublin and showed the work, and that was a mammoth undertaking and a very rich encounter. This year with our, with our limitations, we have gone up to 32 choreographers. I am so proud. This would be nothing without the generosity and the support of all the choreographers and it's really, really dedicated to all of you. Now, I would like to introduce a message from Maureen Cannelly, the director of the Irish Arts Council, who sent us a message today. She is unable to be here in person. And we now are going to listen to Maureen's words. Thank you again. Hello, it's Maureen Cannelly here, director of the Arts Council. I'm delighted to say hello as you launch Dancer from the Dance this evening. I'm sorry I can't be with you actually live. I applaud what you're doing here. It's absolutely fantastic to witness the unstoppable energy vision and drive of the dance community in Ireland. It's incredible to witness how you've created these works and respecting HSE guidelines. I know that for the dance community in particular, the current protocols make life extremely difficult and challenging. And it's been really heartening to witness how you've overcome many of these challenges since the onset of the crisis. That's very much acknowledged and admired by everybody in the Arts Council. Dancer from the Dance also is terrific in terms of the gathering together of 32 Irish and Irish identifying choreographers from Ireland, Africa and the USA. It's wonderful the way you're crossing national borders, practices, ethnicities and generations with this work. The dance community has been particularly adept at reaching out to its audience and to its many, many supporters in the last few months. I wish you all the very best with it and we hope to see you soon again. Thank you very much Maureen. They're the words of the Arts Council director Maureen Cannelly. And I think it comes as a great reassurance and a wonderful boost for everyone in the dance community to hear those words of support and reassurance. And now it's time to introduce our amazing panelists and I would like to introduce Michael Siever, who I originally worked with Michael, I think in 1990 Michael composed music for some of my early work. And I called on Michael again to moderate this panel. How the body carries stories. So I'd now like to introduce Michael Siever and our wonderful panel, Linda Murray, Morgan Bullock, Toby Amotesu, Shona MacRayman, Shabail Deavitt, Siobhan Burke, Ferguss O'Crahour, Rachel Gilkey, Louise Costello and Laura Uprichard. Thank you. Thank you, John. Welcome to everybody. Some people are sharing the Zoom meeting with us here others looking at YouTube and Facebook Live. So you're very welcome wherever you are. As John listed there there are 10 speakers this evening, and each of whom could fill hours of interesting conversation but unfortunately we have a short time so we're just going to move as long as quickly as we can but as with all great conversations hopefully this is one that will spill over into other forums. Unfortunately we all can't go to the pub afterwards and continue the conversation but hopefully some kind of conversation will take place virtually. Any conversation takes place within different contexts, physical context, emotional context or psychic and right now we are under the cloud of COVID-19. We're living under lockdowns, travel restrictions, we have little or no physical interaction with those we love and also we are coming to grips with deaths. Over half a million worldwide, New York, it's had pretty horrific levels and over 200,000 cases and probably 20,000 deaths. And in general, right now for dance and for society in general there is this sense of enforced stillness, but it's also a period of simmering anger and unsettled politics. Certainly the Black Lives Matters has become a really important force not just in the USA but protests are now worldwide as systemic racism has been pushed back and this is as I said in Ireland as much as in the USA. More specifically for dancers stillness means no work, no creation, no income, no contact and yet we go on. So festivals like this, through this we've found a way to engage with our audience to connect and certainly people like Morgan Bullock can reach much to our, all of our jealousy can reach millions of views with her fantastic dancing. But for this discussion we're leaving the virtual aside and we're returning to the live body, the real physical thing that contains the sum of our experiences and that reveals these experiences to those who view the body. The title and how the body carry stories begins what a how and not a what so we can all accept that yes it the body does carry stories and what interests us in this discussion tonight is how that happens and we're going to get perspectives from a whole range of people John has has just listed who they are. So I'm going to begin talking to Chevelle David, who is a Irish dance artist and choreographer and Chevelle carrying stories can also mean carrying tradition or carrying training. You yourself have trained in contemporary classical and Shannos dancing you've done your MA in contemporary dance at UL. So can you identify different strands of stories within your own body and experience as a dancer. Hi Michael thanks very much. And yeah I think this is an absolutely fascinating topic and I was really thinking about it today is trying to write down a few thoughts on the matter and I do work with a lot of different styles but I feel like the traditional is very kind of apt when it comes to talking about this and the idea of passing down through generations and, you know, yeah so say from from my perspective I learned my dancing my Shannos dancing from my mom and then she learned her dancing from her granddad. And I kind of I love the idea that I'm acquiring something and that's handed down through generations and that I'm when I'm performing I'm performing my own movement but there it's kind of engraved there there is a history or hand down engraved in it. So I think that does tell the story. And I'm interested as well. I mean in my practice, I'm kind of obsessed with the moment this notion of realness and, you know, when you when you create a movement or when you're creating a piece and how you're really trying to get this story across and how that can buy the end of the process be broken down. So say, you know, you're how does it make it through rehearsals. And first of all research and development and then tech and then performance and and finding that story in the realness every time. So, yeah, I suppose, for me it's that trying to just hang on to it and keep keep the story going, I suppose. And so that that sense of realness, I mean, is something very honest within within the body that's that's something that we can see through if it's not if it's not real. So it is something that you definitely have to tap into. Yeah, and I've been interested. I was asked John asked me to perform something for this for this festival. And it was something that performed in the past, something before 2016. And I found it really challenging, but in a really, in a really interesting way. And it was really interesting for me to bring a piece into into now. And the fact that my body is different. And I was different then, and I'm different now and but I'm the same. You know, it's like, how does it feel now? How do I make it real now? How do I make it? And how do I make it relevant to myself? And I'm sure like people watching it will find it relevant in some way. But how can I unearth what I was originally trying to tell. And I found it was a really powerful experience, actually. And I find performing can be just a very powerful way of experiencing time. Not to get so very deep. But the body, again, the body tells its own story in time. So. And yeah, so it has it has been a powerful screens. And during the as well the online realm that done the notion of relevance is is extra important because you're so limited or why haven't. So yeah, that's it. And did the piece really change that much in those intervening four years? Well, I when I when I made was essentially, you know, the beats and everything were the same and the timings and it was the same track. But obviously, I was in a site specific space and yeah, it did change and there was a lot of frustration and I think when I made it first, there was a lot of frustration. And now it felt more like some of those frustrations had been kind of worked out and then that there were new ones being unearthed. And obviously now all the tumultuous and such a tumultuous time politically and everything and just about like there were new things to be frustrated about as there always are. So yeah, I think it's fascinating. Yeah, yeah. And Siobhan, if I could speak to you Siobhan Burke is a dancer and dance writer dance critic with the New York Times and Siobhan you wrote a piece of a while back about being a river dancer yourself, ex-river dancer. And I just found it interesting the attitude that you seem to find in other people to this and it's almost like something that you hear. You hear, but what I'm interested is in that sense of kind of fluid identities, fluid dancing identities. So like for you, one hand you're dancing, river dance on the other hand, then you dance trio A. So how do these, how does this, the body change with different pieces or in terms of the stories that it carries? Yeah, thank you. We'll just first to clarify, I've never actually danced the entirety of Yvonne Maynard's trio A. Seven seconds though. I was in a, I was in a project, a film installation project where I was one of many dancers who dance seven seconds of trio A and even that is actually incredibly challenging. And you followed up from Wendy Fielding as far as I remember. I did. Yeah, Wendy Whelan, the Prima Ballerina and now one of the directors of New York City Ballet came before me. So it was, yeah, that was an amazing project to be a part of. But yeah, I guess I've been thinking a lot about my own sort of identity as a dancer in relation to the title of this panel. And, you know, I'm primarily a writer now, but I come, I come to that from my embodied experience of being a dancer from really the age of four, I started formal Irish step dancing lessons at the age of eight. And, you know, I think that recently as I've grown older, I've come to appreciate more my very early experiences as an Irish dancer. And the ways in which it, I guess when I, because I went from being kind of a competitive Irish dancer to then going to college where a college dance program where the emphasis was on contemporary dance and I always felt like I really couldn't like move my body in the way I wanted to just this limitation I felt this this immense limitation. Just using my head and my torso and dropping my weight. And I think that for a long time I was very kind of angry with this Irish dance training that had been. I don't want to say it was even imposed on me I chose it that's that's that's the path that I took but I started to kind of see its limitations and be frustrated with those. But then as I began as I kind of move through that phase of kind of learning more contemporary dance modern jazz. I started to realize that actually these these ways of moving that I developed as an Irish dancer are making me unique you know and I began to find choreographers who were really interested in working with the way that my own body worked and they were interested in that individuality. And so in my journey as a dancer, I feel I was able to kind of reconcile some of these tensions that had previously felt really like in conflict into something that just felt more holistic and into kind of accepting my myself. But it actually took leaving river dance to really accomplish that. Yeah. And I mean, was that the day today, I would say home drum but like that monotony of doing the same thing all the time that you began to feel in a in a box. Yes, it was. It was the kind of there's not a lot of space for personal expression in river dance. It's a, you know, very well oiled machine, and I needed to get into spaces that were more creative more exploratory more with a greater emphasis on improvisation to really be able to kind of tap into something that felt like a truer dancer self. Yeah, yeah, great. Rachel, if I could talk to you for a bit you Rachel Gilkey is the director programming in education at the Irish Arts Center. And, and yesterday when I went on to your website the first image that came up was a photograph of an authority and from the first part of her solo hope hunt where she's standing beside a pretty battered up car it's it's not the usual and Irish dancing body that people would think of and similarly the Irish Arts Arts Center I know commissioned with what our use of observations which is going to premiere on on Thursday. So maybe you, you know, as an American working within the Irish Arts Center. Do you see anything new within what has traditionally been perceived as an Irish dancing body. Yeah, thank you, Michael. It's, it's an interesting question. I think if you approach it from perhaps a an Irish American, a perceived Irish American perspective, the Irish dancing body probably lives much more in that traditional context, and more along the lines of what was just speaking about. And I think something that has been exciting for myself as an arts programmer who has really only come to engage with dance from a more critical perspective as opposed to just an audience enjoying perspective in the last decade or so is that you can I think that what traditional dance can do and can deliver as an experience in the States as sort of both kind of honoring what has come before but as well as what is, you know, what is Ireland now I think that there have been some very powerful stories being told there. But you also have this really rich, vibrant storytelling tradition through the body through the physical body in contemporary dance in Ireland, through artists like on a move towel. You know, Emma Martin, the works at Cheval that had has done with Kristen Fontanella, the sort of exploration of how traditional and contemporary can work side by side, or what might appear as the kind of complete, you know, where where the work wouldn't necessarily you wouldn't look at that and see any traditional Irish within it and I think she also kind of speaks about that but you know I'm also in the back of my mind is often this quote from Emma Martin from a few years ago when she's also talking about how contemporary dance embodies this Irish self consciousness and and and how you can look at in a kind of in a communal aspect the Irish, the Irish body on the dance floor, and how that is something that I think is a place for the Irish body to become unselfconscious or to kind of remove that self consciousness. And I like seeing where that shows up in contemporary dance work. And as an organization in New York, the ability to be able to present that in the past in partnerships and other venues like version of heart center and 92 y and La Mama, but soon to be able to present that in our own home, as well as a way to show these contemporary dance artists, and, and the stories that they're telling that that are Irish stories stories of the Irish body, but and sharing that with with New York New York audiences and New York dance audiences who might have a different perception of what the Irish body might might be. And Morgan, if I could move on to you because you are somebody who, if they're talking about expectations of the traditional Irish, Irish American dancing body. And you've confounded those I mean the midst the joy celebrations and the invitations to come to Ireland from the tea shop on St Patrick's Day and your invitation to perform at Riverdance hopefully that will happen at some stage because I know that the tour was called off at the, at the last minute. And I mean amidst this there were some accusations of, you know, cultural misappropriation by a small minority and I'm not going to even discuss that because we all know that that's absolute nonsense but I suppose I could just ask you to reflect on your dancing body and see and talk about how it carries stories. And I know you trained in tap and ballet before you, and before you took a virus dancing. And I think that journey is something that that you'll be addressing in in your piece on Wednesday and tall and straight my mother talk me. Yeah, so could you talk about that work on your own kind of journey. Yeah, as someone who does not fit the typical look of a traditional Irish dancer. I have always just had to be comfortable with doing something that's just completely unexpected. You know, whenever I introduce myself as an Irish dancer people are kind of taken aback by it they have to you know, just like I see a lot of suppressed reactions and it's just it's just unexpected so I think my journey has been very, it is reflected on that a lot. I mean, it's something that is a huge factor for me as someone who is as passionate about Irish dancing as I am. And I think that the piece tall and straight my mother taught me is definitely just a reflection of my dance journey of not being confident doing what was expected for me. I wasn't very comfortable doing ballet in tap. It was something I kind of just did because I was put into dance when I was three. I always wanted to be a dancer, but I hadn't yet discovered Irish dancing and as soon as I did it changed a lot about me as a person as a dancer. I started to feel more comfortable and feel like I could express myself a little bit more and it's it's an interesting thing for me to talk to other Irish dancers about their experience with Irish dance, because I feel like a lot of people who were put into Irish dance at a young age maybe by Irish parents or, you know, living in Ireland or America, possibly being Irish American. I feel like it's almost seen as something that is, it's a hard form of dance to express yourself with, because of the, it's naturally kind of rigid, but I had a kind of opposite experience as a dancer going from training with ballet and tap to Irish dancing kind of just felt natural to me as a dancer and the piece that I did, it was honestly uncomfortable at times for me to do things that weren't really Irish dance. I feel like Irish dance carries throughout anything else that I do. And I think that just kind of goes to show how big of a part of my life it is as someone who trains in the art form. It's really become almost part of my identity in a way, not in a way that it's overtaken other aspects of my identity but it's just like it's who I am. I'm a black woman, I'm an Irish dancer and those two things together make up. It's kind of like that, like encompasses my story almost because it's just like you can imagine just from those two facts that there's going to be a little bit of a, you know, there's some there's something interesting there it's different so Yeah, I think that the way that my body carries that story is just from in whatever I do there's Irish dance influence even as a student, a college student at a university that has a big focus on the arts, exploring other forms of dance maybe going back to my roots and dance and trying to try out ballet and tap again it's always going to be a mixture of Irish dance and everything else just because that's how I came into being a confident person and that's like Irish dance is what took me to all of my insecurities and my self doubt that I was experiencing before I allowed myself to grow as an Irish dancer and just accept the fact that I'm different, it's I'm always going to be different I'm always going to be, you know, when I walk into a fashion Irish dance audition a lot of people look at me because I don't look like everyone else there so it's just getting over that as someone who going into it was not confident in myself has made me almost, it's just become such a huge factor in who I am today. And another huge factor in your popularity is your willingness to take the Irish dancing steps and, you know, put all the music on it so in other words you're not completely stuck in the competitive dance world that this is the way it is you're quite free and you're willing to expand its expressive potential. Yeah, and that's that's been a huge thing just being able to use my training in a way to express myself outside of the box of Irish dance and I think it's important as participants in such a traditional cultural dance form to do what we can as Irish dancers to like spread the culture and maybe try to reach more audience than just people who are seeking out traditional Irish dancing. Yeah, great. And Toby, if I could speak to you for a while. Toby Amatesso is a hip hop dancer and choreographer based in in Limerick in Ireland. And Toby, you have a piece coming up on that will be premiered on Thursday and called false emotions appearing real. And in your introduction to it you say it's a, the response was a fight or flight response and it's the pieces of exploration of that. And could you could you talk about that and how you place your own body within that conflict as you see it. Yeah, basically, basically I got the inspiration organically and it came to me because of in light of what has been happening. And we seem to be battling with some sort of fear. And, and yeah, it's just to look at the responses that come to us naturally. And when we are faced with a situation that we can either we pose with two options, or with two decisions, and the decisions are either to fight, or you flee. And that's, that's, that's been a biological response throughout ages from the dawn of time, and it's embedded in our bodies and our DNA. And so, so for me to then naturally just kind of hone in on that to see what I can actually portray or bring out or, or show in terms of movement. And to bring it back home to myself in a personal in in a personal journey that I have been, I have been through whereby I had the option to either fight or flee fight to flight response and naturally, I, I most of the time choose to fight, because I'm just, I'm just like that. Well, not I'm just like that. My environmental, my environment, my background, my upbringing, my family, society have made me like that, you know, and, and I'm glad that I, I chose to always fight and not fighting in, in, in physical form. There's, there's, there's different types of fight that you can have. And yeah, and even in some situations fleeing, so the flight or flight response, the flights could be also a fight, depending on the context that you're looking at it at or from. So, so it's, it's a very interesting whereby I'm bringing that into the current situation that is happening now. We could, we could choose so so for example now I'll use myself for example, I could choose to let the situation affect me. And, and be a victim of that situation. I can you understand that is happening or I could decide to you know what I could turn it around. And, and use that energy for some to, to, to tackle it a different way, or, or see from a different perspective, or use it or use it as a stepping stone or you understand so so so so I've always seen. There's always been a, I always see the fight. And I always see, because by seeing by putting myself in that mentally and physically. It allows me to see many options that people that choose the flight response might not see, you know, and, and, and it's just training that muscles. That when we naturally because, because it's easier in some situations to, to be hit with those and to that with that rush of emotion to, to, to act and and the first thing and most time is to flee. It's an instinctive bias without without with the flights fight or fight response, whereby the fight is a more. It has to be. It's a more conscious. Ability or thought process that okay you choose to want to do something about the situation. So so you, if it puts you in a, in a, in a place whereby you are consciously actually choosing to stand. Yeah, and that's why I chose to explore that in the piece that I'll be showing. And did you find within the your own physical body, those two physical sensations. Yes, yes. Definitely, because I don't want to give it a lot of the piece away but, but, but in the different and environmental soft structures in the in the piece. There are different elements to my movement and to my body and then and then even even in the locations, how, how I have to move. There's a very real eminent threat there in those locations. So, so using that as a catalyst throughout my body to actually channel that so so I didn't. At one time I was detached from those flight of fight or flight emotions or feelings. And it was with me throughout the piece. And especially what was happening in what's happening in society. Really brought down, you know, so so I really fully embodied that. Great. That's really interesting and I think hopefully we'll return to this later, because I know that Siobhan you've written about dance as protest within some of the black lives matter demonstrations. But for now I just wanted to push on and maybe talk with Louise. And who's the program. Who's the program manager at dance Ireland. And Louise john told me that you were the one who actually came up with the phrase, the body can carry stories. So we owe you. Thanks for coming up with the title. And can you just talk about what that, and what your understanding of that that phrase is. Thank you, Michael. I suppose. I've been practicing artists up until 2012 when I moved into programming and producing. And I've had a really sort of privileged existence within that to see a lot of work, and to talk with a lot of artists. And I think some of the things that sort of have stayed with me about that. There's something that Liz wrote said last year when we did a podcast with her was it was about the power of presence of the dancing body, and about how you have to stay with your particular language and have resilience about that. And I've also, we had a 30th anniversary a lot of conversations around that at dance Ireland last year. And it's a very particularity of people within the sort of the pioneers of contemporary dance in Ireland. To me, it seemed really obvious that they were sort of looking at new ways of expression to tell different stories and to bring different bodies into our sort of performing context in Ireland. And having spent time away from Ireland and sort of a few years ago. And it reminded when I returned that there's something very radical about the language of the body in a society which has a really strong literary and verbal tradition. And that's something that personally draws me to dance over and over again and that's that's how it operates sort of at the edge of consciousness and I have to credit a colleague in European colleague with that phrase. It can cross borders quite easily it can get through the sort of the world of words. And it can get to the heart of things really quickly. I remember seeing John Scott's fall and recover actually reviewed it for UK magazine in 2005. And it was just massively eloquent about the different experiences, but it didn't say a word. And it was very, the very liveness of it was, I found it really affecting. And I think this has stayed in my mind as I've traveled through different countries and just in terms of how international the dance community is. Even when a choreographer sets work. It becomes something different depending on who dances it. I think we have a new generation of dancers who are willing to cross boundaries between art forms and make multi disciplinary work and look for ways to say things differently. And I think we're seeing a lot of these stories as particularly in festivals over the last few years. I think it was one of the most exciting things about coming back to Ireland was seeing how younger artists are working together and while their connections with traditions are contemporary dance and traditional dance. I can see how people are recreating that around, and around what is very much our contemporary life in Ireland. I feel in some ways that dances far ahead in terms of being radical around the kind of bodies and stories we have in our public space. And I suppose that's really what informed the thinking around the title. Laurie, if I could, if I could move on to you. Your independent curator and producer says here but most people in Dublin will know you from your time as artistic director of the Dublin Dance Festival. And back in John reminded me earlier when I was chatting to him back in 2010. You had a symposium at the festival called many bodies of contemporary dance. And that was the year that rhyming tog was there. Jeremy had brought over Heidi Latsky and Terry O'Connor had created a solo for Jean Butler. So can you talk, not necessarily about specifically that but just how you see the, the many bodies, not just as opposed to contemporary dance but of dance in general. Sure, thanks Michael. It's great to be here. When I was thinking about this topic, I realized that a lot of people a lot of dancers, both African American dancers and Irish dancers have spoken to me about the accumulation of abuse and repression in their bodies and I thought about how to talk about that. But those aren't really my stories, so it didn't seem totally appropriate. But it is, it's interesting to me that it was 10 years ago that we had a thread in the Dublin Dance Festival about the different bodies of contemporary dance. And yes, that symposium was coordinated in association with Deirdre Moroney and the Graduate Center and that went really well but even more, I guess visibly to me, seeing those young Irish dancers working with Raymond Hogan, young people of voices, as well as the differently abled bodies in Heidi's gimp and the nearly 80 year old, at that point, Yvonne Reiner on stage. You know, also Sylvia Robody in her tight dress, if you remember that in the cube, and David Bolzer and his mother premiered that year and I think they think those bodies truly articulate the story of who can dance and why can you dance? Yeah, yeah. Laurie, I know you had pre-cooked videos and there's something that you had wanted to specifically talk about art. Well, I'm actually the curator of performing arts at the contemporary art center in New Orleans now. We've been working with an artist from the Bay Area, her name is Joe Kreider, and she's working on a piece, she's made a piece called The Wait Room that we want to bring to New Orleans next year. And what I think is extremely illustrative of this topic is it's based on her own personal experience and other experiences, other experiences of having a loved one who is incarcerated. And so she has created with her set designer a set that has a lot of hanging chairs that represent the discomfort of the number of hours that she would have to wait to see her partner and other people have that same experience. And I just had 30 seconds of a video, which I think I could find. Shoot. This went flawlessly in the rehearsal. No, it's not coming up. But anyway, I can, I can post the link for y'all and I would just suggest watching it because at the conclusion that there's a lot of flying around a 20 foot pole and that freedom when you're talking about an incarcerated person just it resonates so much that I find it really brings this topic into visibility. Yeah, well, certainly we saw a glimpse of it earlier on and it looked beautiful. Yeah, yeah. Thanks, all right. Shona, can I talk with you for a while. Sean work Raymond is a freelance dance writer and in base in Dublin, and is often a colleague of mine on the comfortable critics chairs that you find in the plush theaters in Dublin. I was thinking earlier, I'm just thinking of an authority is as an example of as a dancer who can perfectly embody different experiences. I'm just thinking of things like hope on and about fast prayer where the the male angry male aggressive male is like almost perfectly embodied by her. Shona just as somebody who is sat in theaters and seen an awful lot of dance and through the years have you noticed any change in or trends or anything that ties us all together of a of a Irish dancing body or in more general, how a body carries stories. Yes, I have spent quite a bit of time watching dance over the many years. I think one of the interesting things about the changes is really when you're looking at how the body carries stories. You also looking at the kinds of stories that have been either, you know, kept secret, being repressed. And now is there is a time to tell them, and that somehow everything came at the same time as as almost, you know the nation state began to mature. I was able to manage to expose these stories. I just felt dance and the language of dance seemed to me to be the best form for articulating whether these were transgressions of the body of the Irish body where it was really and how you do that. And, you know, dealing with uncomfortable subjects that really, in a sense have to do with the body and how we, as a society were able to look at that differently and I just felt dance. As I think it was Louise just talked about how it was almost ahead of itself the curve in a maybe drawing on the power of dance as a language, you know, and mining the ambiguity of that language which allows you to deal with the kinds of conflicts or challenges, you know, the, the contradictions in a very, you know, very fluent and eloquent way, you know, again, echoing something that I think it was also Louise who was talking about the fall and winter piece that John Scott did many years ago. You know, again, you know, the way that dance can deal with uncertainty and with trauma and with all those things and I think it's been really good for the Irish body to have, you know, and for the society to have access to the fantastic choreographers that we've had who've, you know, taken on troubling difficult subjects, but it's not all dark too I mean I think also that, you know, we've learned how to play again as well and that there is. I just think that it's just been a very interesting journey that I think Shona's just frozen there, and hopefully it's not me that has frozen. But sorry, Shona, you certainly for me froze, yeah. I probably froze for the millions of viewers. I don't know what happened, censorship obviously. And yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting the fall and recover has been mentioned twice and for me one of the way that that piece work the only way that piece worked is the fact that there were no words in it that these people were using fully physical expression alone, and because the words could not deal and or couldn't deal with the issues that were there. The other thing I was thinking as well shown is that oftentimes theater companies here have collaborated with sometimes companies when words have failed them as well. Yes, absolutely. And I think that that's also been a very interesting way because of how movement just in itself can be so expressive can maybe not just tell the story but give an even, you know, excavate something else below the words the kind of pre verbal, you know, of that, of an emotion or a situation. A few years ago I had the opportunity to see Sylvie Guillem, the marvelous Sylvie Guillem and a month in the country Frederick Ashton's month in the country. At the end of it. I mean, her body just is so expressive and articulate and moving in the sense of kind of lost opportunity or loss and it brought to mind immediately that closing scene or not the closing scene was one of the scenes in of Peggy Mike in Playboy of the Western World. And again that kind of what where she was almost lost for words, you know, as she said I've lost the paper in the Western World. And just that scene exactly that thing it mirrored, but it was even more powerful when there was no words. Yeah, yeah, great. And Fergus, if I could turn to you for us to call her as a choreographer and dancer and originally from on Rinn in Waterford now back in London. And Fergus, an awful lot of what we've been talking about have been people talking about the some of their experiences and how that creates their dancing body but I was really interested in something that you were writing in your blog about a workshop that you did and you drew attention to the physical isolation that we're all feeling right now during the COVID-19 lockdown and just how your physical being is also made up of other people and how we often forget that. Yeah, I guess for me it's very important. I mean, it's been something that I've been thinking about for a while this idea of interdependence, because we were so and I think it's an interesting thing to think about in our decade of centenaries, as we're going to be sort of thinking about what independence means means, I think actually interdependence feels like a healthier aspiration to celebrate because I think the idea of independence as if we were not related not reliant on other people is something that is suited a particular kind of economic approach for the past number of years, and actually nothing that I achieve as possible without the support of others. And the work that I talked about was, it was a choreography by a French choreographer called Eric Minquon Castin. And it was basically a kind of glided a guided clubbing experience, but it made me realize that when I dance now on my own in this room which is a kind of bedroom and not very amenable for dancing that the only resource that I have are the many people that have danced through me and with me I feel them all of the time. But that starts to make me think about in this context of telling stories. For me it's very important that I work in contemporary dance so as in, we're in an art form where we get to make new stories, we make decisions, it's not just about passing on inherited stories. So it's about taking that form and translating it in a way we'll say that Chevelle or Morgan do in relation to traditional Irish dance there is that exploration. And I think it's very important for me to think about, you know, who's in the room who's on the stage, who, who is allied with whom because it's not about telling a story of how Irishness used to be. We get to help define what Irishness can be and will be for the future. And I think that's what's so radical about our work. And in a way for me it's important that dance isn't a language that represents. It's actually an action that does. So again to talk about full and recover it's about who those people are on stage together the work that they've done, or the work that Creglon does it's it's like it's important who those people are it's not that they're representing, it's that they are. So I think that sense of what particularly live dance does show up and say, this is the way that the world could be. I think that for me is both the challenge and the excitement of it. Yeah, yeah, and that's really an important thing I remember years ago at a workshop. When the body was introduced and says I said my name is and I was immediately shut down by the person saying your name is something you have a dog. Who are you, you know, and I think that's, that's exactly, that's exactly right. And can you talk a bit about the piece that you, and it's kind of a bit of a reworking isn't it latex. Yes, so latex 2020 is john in fact it asked us to if we wanted to revisit work that we done before and particularly at this moment in a way, honestly, in my home in London. The idea of finding kind of creative stimulus of thinking about doing something new is very difficult in this situation. So I made a deliberate choice to kind of reconnect with things that had resourced me before. And so I went back to work cure which was made by commissioning six other choreographers so dancers and the visual artists that I'd worked with on tabernacle. And I commissioned them to make work, them having made work for me as artists as performers before now it was for them to make work for me as a soloist so this piece is the section that Sarah Brown who's a visual artist primarily has made. And it's been fascinating to kind of work across distance so she's in Dublin at the moment that it's actually through the material that's latex sculpture this latex object which I happen to have. But that she made that it's through that that she's made the choreography and, and now it was a chance to revisit what that section looked like it was actually made on its own before, and then put together with the other pieces. And now we've sort of detached it looked at it again and thought with this body now this time later in this context in London, what does it mean. Yeah, fantastic. And Linda finally can I can I talk to you. You're the curator of the Jerome Robbins dance division of the New York public library, and I suppose as an archivist. Hopefully you can give a nice bow on the top of this but you also have a huge broad historical viewpoint on this question of how the body tells a story. And so what are your reflections. Yeah, and I think a lot of people have touched on it in different ways today. But when I think about the body carrying a story I always think of what Martha Graham said that the body never lies and we've, we've talked a lot about the fact that Ireland's cultural legacy is based on our gift with language. But words can be very problematic and deceptive and even when we're attempting to be truthful there can be a multitude that's concealed beneath that that doesn't surface up. And so dance for me is, you know, it's, it's a space where the most honest mode of communication is at our disposal, because of benefits from being highly individualistic that is it's my body in my movement but it's also being understood. And for me no other form can allow one to more fully express your cultural and kinetic specificity within that form of global dialogue. I was thinking through this weekend about the notion of the body carrying a story forward and I see it in several ways. I think the concept that's most familiar to dance artists is that transmission of embodied knowledge that occurs in the studio, where we store learned technique and our muscles and bones that's passed down to us by elders, and that we impart and turn to the next generation. And in repertory as well dancer safeguard choreography in their bodies, and are often part of the process of sustaining choreographic intent through time. And essential to the very definition of dance is this methodology that relies on physical proximity and verbal cues and emotional connection. I think it's because it, you know, it taps into the very foundation of what it means to be human. And it can be understood on a very basic level by anybody, but it simultaneously requires a level of heightened awareness and responsiveness that is beyond the grasp of everybody as a trained dancer. It's a mode of sharing knowledge that's not replicated in any other academic or artistic discipline in the same way. But that transfer of information is not exact. And in inhabiting technique or choreography our bodies have to adapt from their natural inclinations to execute the movement. And we are able to use different and we compensate differently to achieve the same goal subtly but incrementally shifting the original choreography toward a new horizon. Sometimes in dance we resist this change. And I see that mostly in pedagogical technique, but other times you see choreographers really embrace that idea, and they focus in on the individual gifts of their dancers and adapt previously to their work to suit the bodies of the present rather than trying to hold on to a version of the past, which I think is what Fergus really beautifully called interdependent body. George Balanchine in particular, I'm always surprised that people are particularly strident in defending Balanchine choreography, because he was so inclined toward this approach of reworking masterpieces to suit the needs of dancers of different populations that his artistic partnered in Conquerstein wrote a position paper in the 1950s that choreography may lie outside what can be protected by copyright law, because dance is so influenced by the very fact of who is doing the dancing. In recent years, there's a wonderful dance and disability advocate and choreographer Alice Shepherd was working over here who brought to my attention the fact that the UK granted additional copyrights to dancers with disability to choreographic work made by somebody else as their own bodies radically transformed the original choreographic vision and intent. Another part to carrying stories which I think has also been brought up. I think it was Shauna who called it as an excavation of emotion, which I thought was a lovely way to phrase it. And that's, you know, it's kind of the way we carry stories as individuals, particularly your trauma, and that's inscribed in our bodies and this is something that can be brought out through somatic practice. At a granular level, it can be about your own lived experience, but extrapolating out, you can explore whether collective trauma and grief manifests itself across a national core. I have to admit, I was a bit of a late adapter to this way of thinking. When I was dancing, my knowledge of my body was about the pain, the physical pain I experienced and I would have totally denied that there was this more pure emotional kind of scar tissue that could be lying beneath. I've since had experiences that has brought me around to a different way of thinking. When I think about what I do now in my role as the person who oversees the largest repository of dance material that we have globally, I'm always struck by the fact that archives themselves are very much about individual emotion and physical presence. And yet dance, which is so much an embodiment of these ideas has for most of history being relegated beyond the boundaries of archival space. Dance itself is about inhabiting the present to the exclusion of all else in that sense of sense of performance, but it is also the connective tissue that holds together our cultural memory across bodies. And so I find it, I've always struggled with that notion that dance has never been able to find for itself until quite recently a space in our cultural memory. Archiving itself is an act of remembrance. We safeguard materials, not for the inherent value of the object itself, but rather to cherish the narrative that contains. This species concerned with recording our history, we innately understand the importance of placing material into an archive. There's an archival theorist called Terry cook quite often quote in 2011 he made this declaration that we are what we keep. And the article that he wrote itself was about the history of appraisal and what it means to select material for archives and museums, and it's core that phrase cuts to an essential truth about the practice of archived ship. As human beings we instinctively place value on any items that survive across time, but we ascribe special meaning to items that are purposefully kept the knowledge that those who went through this took extraordinary measures to ensure the safety of particular objects informs our reading of them. And we assume legitimacy of those items as part of our cultural legacy. So placing some something in an archive assures its longevity not just physically but as part of the continuum of intellectual and artistic inquiry. Museums is finite, and we're defined by the history that we curate for ourselves. So if we are what we keep what we don't keep is what we eliminate out of the narrative. The division I represent began collecting in 1944. The entire field of dance was all absent from protection and legitimacy of archives, archives and museums are built on the collection of tangible artifacts and dance lack the ability to provide a core manuscript. So I think that this work that John is helping us undertake today of acknowledging the centrality of the body as an archival site and a space for historical and personal narrative is cherished. It's essential for dance if it's to be afforded the same protections and rights as the rest of the performing arts. Great. Thank you. That's very eloquently said. I think now we're going to open up the discussion to to everyone. And just before then I did get a private message from John to say that some of the dancers did speak words in in form recover and I think the point that I was making was that the process of making it and it was a non verbal process and I remember talking to John at the time and and had they had a theater practitioner who was asking them to write down or tell their stories through words than that would have been a different and almost impossible to have achieved what was achieved and fall and recover that it was the very non verbal nature of their engagement with with their past and their embodied wounds that spoke most eloquently and there was that that was the success of the piece. And so I think we are going to broaden everything out as I said, and I don't know I know some people has probably been almost an hour since they spoke so if any of the early contributors want to comment on things that were subsequently said we can do that and I'm still waiting for the screen to go into so I can see people. And but if not, and then I might just touch on something that Toby had mentioned. And to say about she won't want to know that you wrote about dance as a protest in the black lives matter demonstrations for the for the New York Times. Can you maybe talk a bit about that. Sure. I also just wanted to point out that there is a question in the chat. So yeah, perhaps, I think it's a several important questions so do you want me to speak to that and then go to the question. Yeah, yeah. I recently wrote a story that was looking at dance as a part of the protests that have been happening recently. Globally but I specifically spoke to dancers in three US cities in New York, Chicago and Minneapolis about what it means to them to dance and protest and the inspiration for the story was that at that time, I was seeing a lot of. Well, first of all, just to say that in New York, it feels and has felt since the beginning of June like there's just been this incredible kind of like revolutionary energy and spirit. And it's just been an incredible thing to be a part of the black lives matter protests here. It's a privilege to be able to be part of them. And the story kind of came about looking at the kind of contrasts between the images of police violence that I was seeing coming out of protests which were just like filling my Twitter feed. There was a lot of, I mean, as everybody knows, there, there was just a great deal of violence inflicted on protesters by police. In the early days of these protests here it's continuing to happen it just happened yesterday at the queer liberation March here in New York and other places, but in very early June. I was seeing a lot of these images of the ways that protesters were being harmed. And, and in contrast to that, because I my kind of social media world is so dance focus I was also seeing just these incredible expressions of joy, resistance through the expression that was taking place at protests and also really interesting kind of cross cultural expressions of cross cultural solidarity happening through dance so one of the, the groups I talked to was the leaders of an Aztec dance group that's based in Minneapolis who has been really active in Black Lives Matter protests in Minneapolis for several years they kind of come out. They don't think of themselves as performers really. They, they come out and they, they dancing drum in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. And I spoke to. I feel like again like these aren't really my stories to tell and you read the stories read the quotes from the dancers click on the links watch their dancing watch their videos. I spoke to, you know, a group of ballroom vogue dancers in Chicago who were kind of through voguing kind of speaking to the importance of transgender people in the Black Lives Matter movement and kind of trying to re center trans perspectives and push to decide. And anyway, I think that for me that was a way of bringing attention to the joyousness resilience and also that that was kind of happening alongside this violence and I also don't want to one thing that came up in the dance is not always a celebration it's not always an expression of joy, and that it can be a place to kind of release a lot of incredibly, you know, like more difficult and painful emotions and also a way of a kind of form of spiritual connection, sort of prayer form of connecting to ancestors, depending on, you know what your traditions are, and where you're coming from. So, there's a lot of discussion going on here Shavon that's so perfect. The second lines, which are typically follow a funeral procession and include music and dance in the streets, and the fact that people have not been able to celebrate or give tribute to those who have died in that way it's been very hard on the culture here. Yeah. And if the other panelists want to to join in on this. Yes. Maybe, like, oh, Toby, sorry, yes, go ahead. Um, it's just, it's just to add we watch even said that that because personally, my, the, my art form was created. From such movement as such that is happening with the black life matter. Hip, hip hop is is a is a is a is a is a protest and is a heavily involved in activists and activists, activists. Sorry, my wall fills me activism. There you go. And, and yes, so, so it's, it's amazing to see that coming. Well, I won't say amazing, but at the same time, it's just to see that come almost like full circle whereby the art is still very much used for for that. And, well, in my circle anyways, and the, and the pioneer of the, of the art form that actually created the art form took to the streets with a black light movement up in New York. And, and they had the line out and they, they, they showcased with where voice fills, they use their body to actually almost touch, touch to human heart where voice and where our voices or language feel to. And, and, and the response was very much well received. Yes, and, and, and just to see that and, and to see that that that that that form and that art is still used in that way for me personally kind of touched a string in me that okay yes, but the art form I've been, I've been lucky enough, I'm blessed enough to practice is still actually still keeping to the authenticity of the art form. Yeah, and she once saw it like voguing is a street dance is a street style. There's no academic Institute where you can go and learn voguing is still very much a cultural based standing for the LGBT and transgender community and dance is, is, and that art form is, is part of the street dance culture and is a culture that's still very much used to actually speak where world feels. Yeah, I think it's just so important to recognize that many dance forms, as you're saying have always been a form of protest. Yes, and that's, that's where they come from. I was just going to say, I think it's important to address the kind of question or provocation that Matt Goff has posed for us in the chat. And, which is asking around kind of diversity and in Ireland, and who gets to kind of shape the stories. There are some things that maybe mass mass asks do words fail because they reveal the issues we don't want to deal with. And I guess I'm someone who's like committed to dance and to and to movement, and I think I would have to own that that is probably something to do with my trajectory as someone who's come from a very language heavy culture, and that articulacy is the kind of currency that it felt to me the most radical thing to do was not to talk, but to, but to show up, and to show up in relations with different people and to do that in different ways. I want to say that I like, I would argue that in our context in Ireland that that is valuable or in particular context, but I, the thing that I'm taking from Matt is Matt's comment is, of course, they're important moments in when to speak and to speak out and to and to and to reveal and to tell the truth that those, those are also important. I just, yeah, I think I want to still hold on to the possibility that just the gathering of people already, even before they make their kind of claim is a powerful political message. Absolutely, except what Matt is articulating there and and what that might mean in Ireland what other stories, what stories do we need to tell, and I hope those of you, some of you will know that I did work for around Roger Casement and one of the things that attracted me to Casement in that moment of thinking about how we defined our national identity was that he was someone who anti colonialist international exposing human rights abuses in the Congo and in South America for indigenous communities in South America. So for me it was very positive to imagine a story of kind of Irish foundational myth that was already connected with the experiences of other people. I think that, like the Easter Rising, and was looked to by a quality black equality campaigners in America, African Americans, Jamaican Americans, and the grades like Marcus Harvey, as an example, so there, there are moments that there's an experience for us that is solidarity, but we also have to know that now as privileged white people we pass we have the privilege of whiteness. So, and we have a history that we can draw on, but we also have a reality that we have to face. John, you wanted to join in. Yes, Michael. Listening to everyone thank you the the contributions are so thought provoking and and and very inspiring. One of the things that I thought about when I was asked about having the festival was who is Irish and who is allowed to be Irish and I wanted to collaborate with American artists who have an Irish identity. I also had a contact with Jean Butler last year. Derek are Sean Curran. But then it was also very important to me to bring Muftar Youssef born in Nigeria but raised in Ireland living in a small village trim and I started I think I was given the greatest gift in 2003 when I started working with survivors of torture at the Esperasi the Center for survivors of torture in Dublin. And I was working with people who maybe had been in Ireland for months or maybe a couple of years living in hostels. And they, whatever was in their experience and whatever happened to us together in the room, which were therapy workshops, we're turning into the greatest artistic experience and works of my life. And it connected me it made me feel more present more real as a human being as an artist, and also as an Irish person. Then simultaneously the people I was working with were getting deportation orders. I ended up in the, in the immigration office, sitting with a couple of activists, in case somebody when they were getting their deportation would be snatched away and taken upstairs. And I had this woman who had college students from UCD, waiting to protest who knew how to lie in front of the place where the van opens to take people to the airport. And I thought, I'm a choreographer making sense and what the hell is happening. And it wasn't horrible it was horrible but it was also something very beautiful and very real. And we have to fill out immigration papers for Homeland Security to bring people to New York to get their work permits, and they have to write their country of birth and these people. Maybe who I worked with most of them are now our citizens but we go abroad we travel and you arrive in the airport and some of the people in my work are not pale with freckles and red hair and they come out of the airport and you're Irish and I always want to punch them every time I think what the hell, what the hell is your problem that you have to even question this, and who is allowed to be Irish. And she gets racist attacks because she is practicing an art form of Irish step dancing in America, and she is so gracious about it, so gracious, and I don't know how she can be with everything that's happening. The thing I think is, it's in a way beautiful I read this interview with Tarnashi coats a week or two ago of that there is maybe a chance for optimism now despite the violence despite the pandemic beside these things about how we all universally have to define ourselves and and not quite privileged but the right to be a citizen of wherever. And that's one of the things that made the, the idea of an Irish dance festival and people who know me my work has so many influences of the American postmodern of German expressionism of other European trends I don't know I never took an Irish step dancing class in my life, I feel so Irish and I'm losing my train now but I've kind of gushed enough but there is something. Yes, it was the challenge to define Irishness or rather to destroy the concept of Irishness, or to remake the concept of Irishness, as Ferguson said in an interdependent way that connects us all. And that we are now even talking in New Orleans in Virginia in New York in London in other places and we're sharing these things. There is something deeper happening and and I am so proud to have a festival that. It's not even that it's a festival it's to show the differences, the differences and the similarities I don't know what is Irish anymore. I don't think we can really decide what that is this is this is about just opening it up and because I have sat in deportation offices. I never forget that moment I smell those offices, I smell solicitors offices I Google horrible things that happen in countries so that you can bring them to the lawyer, so that that might help prevent a deportation and I have never got over that. And it's, it's in my guts whenever I'm in the studio, and it's in my guts when I'm planning this festival, and when people say some horrible racist thing to somebody, because they don't look Irish enough. And you know I have a West British accent and a kind of an angle Irish identity. And when I open my mouth sometimes people say you're not Irish or English or you're, you know, that's fine. I look fine. My husband is Brazilian sometimes we get stopped at the airport. And that just gets asked simple questions but because of of that and I don't know. Yes, other people have been killed for that in other places so we're lucky here but I've had my explosion so I'll let you go that I had to say that. Thank you john. I don't know how we're doing for time. john. Should we keep the discussion. I think you muted yourself. john I think you muted yourself. I think you're still muted john. There you go. Oh, can you hear me now. Yes, we are a little over time but I think we Chris, can we keep going. Yeah, why not. We have a certain there's a certain window that the meeting is reserved for but if people want to stay I think we can keep going. Great. I just, oh, kind of. Yeah, Toby. Um, the question that Michael, I mean, sorry, match you. I'm posed in regards to seeing, especially the first body of the of the message whereby it's saying I'm especially after the white world. Yeah. But just to bring attention to that because it's a very important. Because, because for me, I did not see the first. The, the first time I got interest in theater was when I saw table flow. Dublin Dance Festival brought table flow. I think they're a group of, I think they're from Rwanda or Senegalese Senegalese or I can quite remember, but and they shared their, the artistry, and there was a Q&A as well. And then, and then I saw John Scott piece piece as well and his walk, and then, and then I saw Patrick young. And to be honest with you, those are the pieces that have inspired me because, because they touched a part of me that I've never been actually been allowed to be touched or almost like us to try. And I think it's a great stage because it's the work is only for a, for kind of a certain kind of people. And, and, and there's, there's hundreds of like me here in Ireland. They don't feel, they don't feel as if there's enough work out there to portray the ethnic minorities. And I'm not, yeah. And I'm not even talking only, only about black and colored skin. I'm talking about the traveler, the traveling community as well. I haven't actually seen any work from traveling community, but haven't said that there is actually a group of amazing group from Waterford, from the traveling community that actually make pieces for their community. But, but I haven't said that, but basically my idea, what I'm trying to say is that, not until I saw those pieces on stage that I, as a black Irish kid or adult or whatever. That's the only time I really identified with something and something was instilled in me. Because before that, I could not identify with anybody that was been, that has been on stage or that is on stage or whatever they're trying to portray on stage. It's very important that the diversity going forward whereby dance, dance and performances are for a targeted a different demographic, not just not just a set of demographic people because if not for those pieces, I would not be the Toby I am today. If not for me seeing that performance in Dublin Dance Festival of those six individuals that they brought down or seeing John Scott pieces or seeing Catherine Young pieces, I would not, the Toby you see here would not be here today. And, and, and just to end real quickly because I have a 19 year old brother that was born in Ireland, and again there's hundreds of them. I keep facing reset, resentment in every section or every section of society. What happens is hunger and hunger and hunger bruise in them something, something disruptive start brewing in them. And by the time they get into society. All they know is been is been anger and resentment that they're going to have to vent that out. Somehow, in source in some shape or form, and, and most of the time is going to be destructive. If we look at the UK, there's an even in the States. And I work in, in, in those communities where, where did. Yeah, I work in those communities so so I know firsthand, and because I know, even my, my brother of 19 year old now, there's something inside of him that is almost be like I'm being rejected in my own country. You know, Yeah. Sorry. No, no, no. I think somebody was. Thank you. I want to thank you. I just want to expand on a few things. I think, firstly, just to know that Toby's the first person who said black Irish and and up until then, the conversation has been African American. I think that's really important in thinking about who we think is what we think is an Irish body. That my comment about the Dublin dance festival, the notion of asking where am I now in the current climate being white and ableist so being being white bodies and able bodies is incredibly problematic when we recognize the inequality that COVID has brought us and Toby makes the really clear point it's about bodies feeling welcome, because they are spoken out towards. I feel, and it's my perception I'm based in England in Wales actually that's been more specific. I did my masters at the University of Limerick I have very close affinity to dancing island it means a lot to me. And it felt there was a silence from the dance community in terms of black lives matter which says, we don't matter that black lives and black dancers don't matter in the wider scheme. And so, you know, Siobhan was really was actually really articulate about this in terms of saying that actually it's about voices speaking for themselves, not voices being spoken about in terms of other people. So it's incredibly important that the choreographers, the teachers are diverse, because they share a plurality of voice that the critics are diverse, because they have different perspectives. And yes, there are things that we might not want to talk about because they're difficult because they're uncomfortable, because actually yes many people deal with their daily trauma in a gracious way. And I think it's really important that actually those things are articulated people feel valued as bodies, people's stories speak when you let them talk about their own experience outside of other frames and that isn't always happening in dance. If it was, we would be looking at a much more diverse and equal dance sector. But that isn't what we look at. That isn't what we see. And so we have to acknowledge that actually not all those stories are being valued that not all those stories are being allowed to be told, and we have to find ways and action beyond conversation to enable that to happen. Thanks Matt. And this format is difficult. I can't see if people are kind of raising an eyebrow or a hand to took him in. So other panelists, I can't see you. And but to join in a few. Sorry for somebody who's speaking there. Yeah, it's Benjamin Benjamin. Hi, Benji. Hi, Matthew. I'm happy to represent Dublin Dance Festival as part of this panel discussion. And Matthew, I appreciate your comments about this very, this, I mean, this element of the program. And I feel you I read you, though I would say that you are commenting. This small element of the program of the festival, and Dublin Dance Festival is far from being perfect, though I have the feeling, and I feel confident, knowing that Laurie Richard is in the room. I feel confident saying that Dublin Dance Festival has a pretty diverse eclectic and open mind program regard in comparison to some other festivals that are running that are presenting promoting presenting some other art forms. I really appreciate the comments and we all have to make a lot of efforts, and we will, though I would, I would defend a little bit the diversity and the eclecticism of the festival, as it stands for about 15 years now. And but thank you for the comments, it's important. Okay, thank you Benji. And I think Sheila wants to get in on a comment. Yes, I do. Thank you. And I really appreciate Matt bringing this up. I think it's really important that we do address this today and he's right. There hasn't been a very sort of proactive response to Black Lives Matter from the dance community. Everybody is speaking their own voices. And there's a real sense of urgency around this as well just to reassure those who are not sort of based here not feeling this every day that there is a sense of urgency around that. And just from our perspective, I just wanted to sort of say a couple of words on that. And because I didn't want anybody thinking that we have not responded because it isn't important to us. And I wanted to sort of say a little bit about what Dance Ireland has been doing in this sort of respect. We've been taking time to listen and to educate ourselves and to reflect on our own behaviors and actions, because I think that's what we are all each of us called to do, to be an ally or to be anti racist or to really think about how we can support everybody to see and hear and feel those stories that they want to tell or they need to be telling. We want to examine ourselves as an organization first before considering taking a position on behalf of the membership. So in the midst of all of this activity in response to the pandemic and our recent change in leadership by joined two months ago it's been a very big time of change at Dance Ireland. And we want to take and also wanting to take any actions that any actions that we take to be consultative to be authentic to be embedded in our daily practice. So it's best to be really considered in our response to the Black Lives Matter campaign and how we are ensuring we're addressing diversity, equality and inclusion in all that we do. So one of the things that we're looking at we're exploring at the moment is the idea of establishing a critical friends group. The next group would be to draw together staff and board and sector representatives to engage in a process of critique of our policies and procedures in terms of diversity, equality, inclusion. And to undertake this we want to engage the support and input from leaders from Black and minority ethnic communities, deaf and disabled artists and representatives. So the sector is looking to us for leadership right now, but we want to do it right, and to reflect this in our values and to embed it in any of our future planning and activity. And we're always open to have this conversation and have this dialogue, we want to change from the inside so we can represent everybody meaningfully. Okay, thank you Sheila. Any of the other panelists want to join in on this. I'll just say briefly, I'm not as embedded in that scene of contemporary dance in Ireland right I'm based here in New York, but I think I really appreciate Matthews comments and especially his comment about meeting the diversity of perspectives among critics and historians. Right now, one thing I've been thinking a lot about is just the whiteness of dance criticism of which I'm a part and thinking about very strongly that we need a greater diversity of perspectives and dance criticism. People who can are going to see different things ask different questions, shape stories in a different way and also artists, speaking from their own experiences writing from their own experiences so I just wanted to kind of, I guess, recognize the presence of that, that aspect of your, your comments and questions Matthew and thank you for bringing that into the space. Thank you. Anybody else want to join in on that. Just a question from some of the Facebook comments. One of them here is a person wondering how the panel would respond to how they see the relationship between your work and the industries that support you. They say in the US where I work there's a very bourgeois perception of who has access to work and also who can participate in it. Working within our traditions are pushing against them. Do you feel this is similar? And if so, do you ever challenge this? How? Anybody want to comment on this? Shona. Oh, no, sorry, you just popped up there. Yes, sorry about that, Michael, it was just I had been going to comment on the previous discussion, but we moved on so that's, that's absolutely fine. No, no, no, do go on. I mean really all I wanted to say was that I think it's really important but also kind of interesting that this whole discussion. In the panel today has actually really in as we've gone through the various perspectives on the body that we've actually moved. Shona's frozen again. Hopefully she'll come back. Unless that's me that's frozen. It's you, Michael. Can you hear me? Yeah, keep going. Okay. I just, what I think is that this panel has approached the whole story of the bodies and I'm so, I suppose in a way relieved and excited by the fact that we have now moved into, I suppose in the territory that brings us both into the social cultural political arena within our, not just the dance community but within the wider cultural and general public community about how we are looking at diversity and acting on it. I was delighted to hear what Sheila had to say but from dance Ireland. And, but I think Matthew's comments and just, you know, obviously require a bigger space and more discussion at a further time. Absolutely. And people can probably see that John has has said that himself. Definitely. It's a bigger discussion as we said earlier on that as with all good discussions that it should continue. And then this, this should only be the, be the start of it. And is there anybody else that would like to from the panel that would like to join in. There are a lot of artists in the US that has formed a group and under the title, creating new futures. In response, primarily to all the cancellations that happened, and the power and balance between the artists and the presenters. And most of the presenters being white. And the artists just feel like they've got to step up and speak out and I think it's been really useful there's a long document that you can find on Facebook under that page creating new futures. And I think, I mean, a lot of us are participating in that and talking about how to change the contracting process with artists so that the, you know, the fee doesn't wait until the very last minute and understanding the artists are working up to an engagement time. So it's just been an interesting and very vocal group. There were 7000 people on a Facebook call that Miguel Gutierrez and you need a cast to organize. It was pretty amazing. Thanks, sorry. Steve Matz from Derry has sent a question and I don't know if you can see it, but he makes the point that how the body carries stories to go back to the symposium title I have some issues with the, or some issue with the language, and conceptual assumptions I have a strong intuition that the language we use places hidden constraints on how we think and communicate and dance those issues. Interesting. Anybody like to take that question up that the language itself is a constraining factor in how we dance and communicate the body. Am I going to have to volunteer somebody? I can speak a bit. Thank you, Vargas. First of all, there isn't the body. There are many bodies and bodies are made in relation to other bodies. So that's one place where we let the language sort of we maybe think in terms of a kind of abstract, but also universal body that doesn't take into account the fact that we all have different experiences of bodies and that's changed by our culture, our gender, our sexuality, all those sort of things. So, in that respect, and I think I would agree because we often talk about dance as a language and I don't think of it in those terms. I think there's a risk in thinking about dance as a language, because then it's thought of in that kind of traditional ballet mind sense that I should be able to decode it in the same way that I understand a sentence. Now, maybe it's a language more like poetry, as in elements that we understand and recognize, but actually the energy comes in away from the space between the recognizable elements. That's what happens in poetry. It's not necessarily how it's the space between two words and how they resonate rather than a piece of prose that's telling you the cat sat on the mat. So, in that respect, maybe, and I didn't know what Stephen has in mind, but in that respect, maybe I would agree that, but that's that's often the challenge like here we are speaking we're not dancing now. So we've we're in the we're in the land of translation. So we're we're making the accommodations that we have to do in language because we're talking. I'm fortunately I've been given notice that we do need to wind things down. And John just have a final say, as always, John Scott has the final say. But just to to thank, first of all, the panelists. It's been absolutely fascinating and, as I said in the very beginning, to our conversation with any one of them would have been fascinating. Unfortunately, we had to distill everything down into this. I think it's really planted a seedbed for discussion. And I think John has already said that, you know, maybe this is something that we can develop during the week and and hopefully set a stage where we can further discuss these issues. I want to just thank Jonathan Chris behind the scenes we've been keeping everything running and got us set up and ready to go. And so finally, can I just hand over to John, who I think has a few parting words. Yes, thank you. I'm not muted. Yes, you can all hear me. So, thank you, Michael and thank you all the panelists. It's been really great and thanks everyone else for coming. The festival continues till Friday. Tomorrow we have a class from as Ashley Shen at 10am. It's free. You just go on to the dance island website and follow the link. The evening at five o'clock there is a workshop on trans stabilization and alignment from the amazing Peggy Gould. And then Cheryl Therrien and Ashley Shen are teaching in alterance all week at 10am and there are workshops on fadriskel, gazel Mason and Rachel shield. So, then tomorrow night at 730 every night this week there is a performance of short works by 30 choreographers. Please tune in and and thanks again everyone. Good night.