Mairead Vaughan (PhD) has worked as a professional dance artist, choreographer, somatic movement educator, Yogic practitioner & part-time lecturer in dance & creative process (UL, UCC) for over 30 years. As an artist Mairéad has created an extensive body of original choreographic work, that spans a wide range of multidisciplinary collaborative practise.
Her work with Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy & with a psychosomatic enquiry called Attuning, creates a space through which she offers one - one private sessions, for people interested in the art of embodiment - a living dynamic approach to embodied enquiry as a way of life. She works from both her purpose built home studio space, as well as offering sessions on-line.
Training - Education
PhD (2016), Arts Practice research, supported by four years of consecutive Arts Council of Ireland Dance Research Bursary funding. This provided an intense period of in-depth somatic and creative enquiry through dance, composition and performance.
MA (2020) Studied at The Irish World Academy of Music and Dance (IWAMD), University of Limerick, graduating in Contemporary Dance Performance. She worked with a wide variety of Post Modern dance and choreographic artists including; Dr Mary Nunan, Joan Davis, Steve Paxton, Lisa Nelson, Yoshiko Chuma.
BA (1997) Trained as a professional dancer in Northern School of Contemporary Dance, UK (1997). After graduating in Performing Arts : Contemporary Dance, she pursued a career as a professional dancer and choreographer. And simultaneously, she engaged a 30 year Yogic and Somatic practice.
In 2018 she was invited by Dr Mary Nunan (independent dance artist and MA programme director 2020 - 2017) to return to IWAMD to lecture on the MA programme. And as a PhD student she became course director for BA in Voice and Dance in 2013/14.
Arts Practice Mairéad’s arts research aims to bring awareness to how our inner perceptions, sensations, thoughts, images inform the immediacy of our direct experience. As a choreographer she is interested in constructing immersive performance installation spaces, that elicit an embodied - sensory, kinaesthetic and energetic - response. Her multidisciplinary work spans live theatre & site specific performance, movement-sound collaboration, screendance and durational performance installation in gallery spaces.
Choreography. As founder and co-director of Shakram Dance Company (1999-2014), Mairéad received Arts Council of Ireland funding, to choreograph a body of fifteen original choreographic works. Her earlier choreographic work was highly influenced by the gestural (mudra), rhythmic (nrittra), akasha (space) and rasa (essence) of Bharathanatyam, a South Indian classical dance form. Bharatanatyam, alongside her practice in Iyengar Yoga (started at sixteen years of age), inspired her to travel to India for an extensive period of absorption & embodiment of these ancient wisdom traditions.
On her return from India, Mairéad founded Shakram Dance Company & spent the following ten-year period intensively researching, developing & embodying principles of these ancient wisdom traditions, through her dance, choreographic & performance practice.
She also traveled to remote regions including the Arctic Circle, Amazon rainforest (Ecuador), Mattu Picchu (Peru), Malaysia & Borneo due to her interest in shamanic culture, traditions & practises. A particular interest being in the intrinsic interconnection of ‘body as environment’ within these living traditions. This grounded her enquiry into the symbiotic nature of our body-mind-environment as one living Whole organising intelligence.