Emptying the superfluous. Moving as Zero. Exploring ‘The Point’. That which shines through the transparency of empty space. Casting Light upon (re)Formation.
Artists: Natalia Rotaru, Orla Shine & Mairéad Vaughan, alongside guest artists Inma Moya & Cathy Walsh
Arts Council Research Bursary and supported by Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre, 2021.
thought time Eternity perception space Infinity experience Being
- here and now -
inSkin
inSkin weaves a resonant space of shedding skins, perceptual patterns, residual imprints and energetic impressions. Movement and stillness resolve into a Zero point, revealing the translucent, empty, simplicity of Being here and now inSkin.
Created by dance artist Mairead Vaughan in collaboration with international artists: Tomasz Madajczak (PL), Charlie Dunne (UK), Lily Horgan (UK) and Helle Kvamme (SW).
Funded by The Arts Council of Ireland and supported by Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre through a dance artist in residence programme.
A live movement, video, sound and visual art installation, engaging creative process as durational performance. Cyclical practices of attuning, listening, constructing, deconstructing, reorganising, refining, transmuting, embodying, becoming, dynamic unknowing.
Choreographer: Mairéad Vaughan
Video/Sound Artist: Dara O’Brien
Performers: Aoife Desmond, Carolyn Collier, Mairéad Vaughan
PhD research funded by The Arts Council of Ireland and supported by the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance (IWAMD) University of Limerick, Dance Limerick, Firkin Crane - Home of dance, Cork.
This 3-screen video dance installation, considers the nature of impermanence. 3 windows reflect 3 realities, all existing simultaneously. Living ‘as’ dying, is mirrored through 3 lenses of perception. Moving stillness provides insight into growth, loss & cessation.
Choreographer/Editor: Mairéad Vaughan
Video/Sound Artist/Editor: Dara O’Brien
Dance Artist: Mairéad Vaughan
PhD research funded by The Arts Council of Ireland and Irish World Academy of Music & Dance, University of Limerick. Screened in the University of Limerick as part of an international symposium and selected to be screened as part of Light Moves Screendance Festival. Also screened at Firkin Crane, Cork and at various other symposiums.
‘Living layers of surface residue, contained in stone and form’
The formless becoming form, lies at the heart of this moving enquiry . Six artists engage an embodied exploration of stone surfaces, impressed patternings, energetic residues, held within the exquisite architectural historic ruins of Kanturk Castle and Ballybeg Augustinian Priory, Co. Cork, Ireland.
Choreography/Edit: Mairéad Vaughan
Filming/Edit/Sound: Dara O’Brien
Dance Artists: Mairéad Vaughan, Thomas Butler, Inma Moya-Pavon, Patric Cashman, Karen Gleeson
Funded by The Arts Council of Ireland with support from Firkin Crane and premiered at Cork International Film Festival 2011.
A live dance installation exploring by-locality. Through experimental video and a process of re-configuration, we investigate, can we experience two spaces/places simultaneously?
Choreography: Mairéad Vaughan
Video/live laptop: Dara O’Brien
Dance Artists: Thomas Butler, Inma Moya Pavon, Patric Cashman, Karen Gleeson, Mairéad Vaughan
Performance Venue: Firkin Crane
Funded by The Arts Council of Ireland and supported by the Firkin Crane Blank Canvas Residency.
Mairead Vaughan (dance) and Regan O’Brien (voice), perform two self-devised solos simultaneously, to a live soundscore by Dara O’Brien (composer). Gazing through a window, they search for a question they forgot to ask. The space between illusion and reality, lies at the heart of this question they seek to retrieve.
Choreography/Dance Artist: Mairéad Vaughan
Performer/Voice Artist: Regan O’Brien
Composer/Live Sound: Dara O’Brien
Performance Venue: Project Arts Centre
Funded by Dublin City Council as part of their Incubation Space Residency at The Lab, Dublin City Arts Centre.
A moving meditation. Awareness of sensation, breath, momentum. Emergent moment opening. Witnessing stability as instability. Continual looping succession. Pure open listening attention. Being …. right here, right now.
Choreographer/Dance Artist: Mairéad Vaughan
Composer: Dara O’Brien, Live voice: Regan O’Brien
Funded by Dublin City Council, Dance Ireland, International Dance Festival of Ireland. Conceived as part of Dance Ireland’s Choreographic Initiative. This initiative funding and space to enter into an extensive research period. This choreographic work was selected to be performed at the International Dance Festival 2008.
A flash of brilliant light. A shot like an explosion in the head, shifting perceptions of time and space. When crossed wires fuse and the memory filing system falls into disarray, the basic language of shapes and colours emerges from our unconscious reservoir. This work presents an ethereal journey into a surreal world of mystery, eloqence and confusion. A myriad of jarring moving sculpture, influenced by the South Indian classical dance form Bharatanatyam.
Choreography: Mairead Vaughan
Composer: Dara O’Brien
Dance Artists: Olwen Grindley, Jennifer Fleenor and Mariam Ribon
Funded by the Arts Council of Ireland, Dublin City Council and performed in Project Arts Centre, Dublin.
A dance film set in the streets of Dublin and in the Garden of Remembrance. Juxtaposing Ireland’s historical past with a rapidly evolving millennial culture, Frozen questions the relationship between myth and modernity. A dilemma in a contemporary Irish body-mind identity, struggling to reconcile Ireland old and new.
Choreographer: Mairead Vaughan
Composer: Dara O’Brien
Dance Artists: Olwen Grindley, Becky Reily, Eloy Casanova and Mairead Vaughan
Funded by the Arts Council of Ireland and Dublin City Council. Screened at Vibrate Dance Festival, 2007, Dance House, Lighthouse Cinema, Project Arts Centre 2008, World Congress of Dance Research, Athens 2013.
Described as a dance highlight of the year, 2008 in The Irish Times by Michael Seaver.
Four dancers and two live experimental musicians, explore the chaotic nature of the human body-mind. Seeking to look beyond the external, into the internal, Turbulence reflects the ever-changing ‘worlds’ and resonant ‘states’ of the human condition. Dynamic qualities of looping intensity, subside into sustained periods of stillness and silence. Performers move through space creating webs of live sound and echoing reverb. Sudden frozen stillness and silence resolve, within the midst of chaotic implosions.
Choreographer: Mairead Vaughan
Composer: Dara O’Brien
Live Musicians: Dara O’Brien, David Lacey
Dance Artists: Jennifer Fleenor, Olwen Grindley, Thomas Butler, Avril Murphy
Funded by The Arts Council of Ireland, Dublin City Council and performed in Project Arts Centre, Dublin and Droichead Arts Centre, Drogheda.
Cylinder is a site-specific dance installation created in the unique setting of a Martello Tower, in Millmount, Drogheda. This work responds to the simultaneous circularity and verticality of the architecture of the space. A sense of being observed by past, present and future realities. Residual energies move within and without, above and below, charging dynamic of this duet.
Choreographer: Mairead Vaughan
Dance Artists: Mairead Vaughan and Thomas Butler
Funded by The Arts Council of Ireland, commissioned by Drogheda Borough Council and performed in a Martello Tower as part of Drogheda Arts Festival 2005
A flash of brilliant light. A shot like an explosion in the head shifting perceptions of time and space. When crossed wires fuse and the memory filing system falls into disarray, the basic language of shapes and colours emerge from our unconscious reservoir. This work presents an ethereal journey into a surreal world of mystery, eloquence and confusion. A myriad of jarring moving sculpture influenced by Bharatanatyam, a South Indian classical dance form.
Choreographer: Mairead Vaughan
Dance Artists: Jennifer Fleenor, Lucy Dundon, Megan Kennedy and Lisa Mc Loughlin
Music: Various, including music by Dara O’Brien
Performed in Project Arts Centre, Dublin and Mermaid Arts Centre, Wicklow
Staying honest and truthful in each responsive moving moment. Tracking our movement reaction in response to another, this duet is all about the Truth of our here and now.
Choreographer: Mairead Vaughan
Dancers: Thomas Butler and Olwen Grindley
Music: Various, including music by Dara O’Brien
Performed in Project Arts Centre, Dublin as part of Dublin Fringe Festival.
Matra, a collaborative piece of live dance and music, explores the complex rhythmic, energetic and gestural aspects of Indian Classical music and dance forms.
Choreographer: Mairead Vaughan
Dancer: Mairead Vaughan
Live Musician and Composer: Dara O’Brien
Performed in Project Arts Centre and as part of a national Irish tour. Supported by The Arts Council of Ireland to tour to the Ilios Festival in Norway 2004. Matra was selected by the Fringe festival to be performed as part of “Disclosures”, a platform presenting exciting new choreographic work, in Firkin Crane Cork.
