TerrainSkin:4Dimesional Flow (2014)
Choreographer: Mairead Vaughan
Video/Sound Artist: Dara O’Brien
Dance Artist: Mairead Vaughan
Visual Artists: Aofie Desmond, Carolyn Collier
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.
This three-hour live collaborative dance, video and visual arts performance installation allows insight into the simultaneous, non-linear nature of creative process – a process of becoming, a process of construction and deconstruction, a process of refinement and re-configuration, a process of transition from site to installation and from practice to performance. Our live response attempts to transmit a direct sensory and energetic engagement.
TerrainSkin (2014)
Choreographer/Editor: Mairead Vaughan
Video/Sound Artist/Editor: Dara O’Brien
Dancer: Mairead Vaughan
This three-screen video dance installation considers the deep symbiotic relationship between the body-mind and environment. The porous boundaries between body-mind and site are mediated in an attempt to reflect the immersive intimate moving experience in site-specific environments.
Funded by The Arts Council of Ireland and supported by IWAMD, Firkin Crane and screened in IWAMD, Light Moves Screendance Festival, Firkin Crane and at various symposiums.
Stone and Form (2011)
Choreographer/Editor: Mairead Vaughan
Filming/Editor: Dara O’Brien
Composition: Dara O’Brien
Performers: Mairead 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.
‘Living layers of surface residue contained in stone and form’
Stone and Form is a site-specific dance film set in the historic ruins of Kanturk Castle and Ballybeg Augustinian Priory, Co. Cork, Ireland. This work explores the delicate balance between the body’s internal architecture and its relationship to its surroundings. Hidden narratives are embodied within a sensory engagement which responds to the energetic residues inhabiting these ruins. The body-mind is perceived as energetically sculptured material that becomes space and surface.
Bi-location (2009)
Choreography: Mairead Vaughan
Video/live laptop: Dara O’Brien
Dancers: Mairead Vaughan, Thomas Butler, Inma Moya Pavon, Patric Cashman, Karen Gleeson
Performance Venue: Firkin Crane
Funded by The Arts Council of Ireland and supported by the Firkin Crane Blank Canvas Residency.
This installation performance was the culmination of a dance residency and research period exploring the relationship between camera, body and site-specific environments. This installation experience brought the evocative ruins of Ballybeg Priory and Kanturk Castle into a re-configured theatre space, through experimental video, live dance and live sound/laptop.
Two World’s Lie At Their Feet (2008)
Choreography/Dancer: Mairead Vaughan
Actor: Regan O’Brien
Composer/Live Sound: Dara O’Brien
Performance Venue: Project Arts Centre
Funded by Dublin City Council and The Incubation Space Residency.
Mairead Vaughan and Regan O’Brien simultaneously perform self-devised solos woven together in a symbiotic exchange of dance, theatre and voice; accompanied by Dara O’Brien’s live soundscape. While gazing through a window, they search for a question they forgot to ask. This work reveals the world between illusion and actuality that is at the heart of the question they seek to retrieve.
Being Nowhere Else (2008)
Choreographer/Dancer: Mairead Vaughan
Composer/Live Voice: Dara O’Brien/Regan O’Brien
Funded by Dublin City Council, Dance Ireland, International Dance Festival.
This solo was conceived as part of Dance Ireland’s Choreographic Initiative. This initiative provided funding and space to enter into an extensive research period. Mairead explored a variety of movement principles and sensibilities from various world dance workshops she attended in Borneo, Malaysia, Peru and Ecuador over the previous two years. This solo was selected to be performed at the International Dance Festival 2008.
Frozen (2008)
Choreographer: Mairead Vaughan
Composer: Dara O’Brien
Dancers: 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.
Frozen is a site-specific dance film set in the streets of Dublin and in the Garden of Remembrance. Frozen juxtaposes Ireland’s iconic and historical past with today’s rapidly evolving culture questioning the relationship between myth and modernity and posturing a dilemma in the contemporary Irish psyche struggling to reconcile Ireland old and new.
The Anima and Animus 2 (2007)
Choreography: Mairead Vaughan
Composer: Dara O’Brien
Dancers: 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 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 sinister and surreal world of mystery, eloqence and confusion. A myriad of jarring moving sculpture influenced by classical Indian dance forms.
Turbulence (2005)
Choreographer: Mairead Vaughan
Composer: Dara O’Brien
Live Musicians: Dara O’Brien, David Lacey
Dancers: 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.
Turbulence is a collaborative production presenting unique relationships and interplay between live music and dance, with four dancers and two musicians. Turbulence reveals the chaotic nature of the human brain. Looking beyond the exterior to a more profound quality of movement, we can observe the dancer moving in a deeply personal manner, at moments almost entering into the minds of the performers.
Cylinder (2005)
Choreographer: Mairead Vaughan
Dancers: 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.
This site-specific dance installation was created specifically for the unique and historic setting of the Martello Tower in Millmount, Drogheda. Inspired by the architecture of the building and the surrounding historical landscape, this duet evokes ghost like images of our past, present and future, that exist within us and around us in one unifying field.
The Anima and the Animus 1 (2003)
Choreographer: Mairead Vaughan
Dancers: 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.
This work was presented as part of a triple bill called ‘Promises Promises’ by three Irish – based choreographers and was supported by Project Arts Centre.
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 sinister and surreal world of mystery, eloquence and confusion. A myriad of jarring moving sculpture influenced by classical Indian dance forms.
It Was All About the Truth (2003)
Choreographer: Mairead Vaughan
Dancers: Tom Butler and Olwen Grindley
Performed at Dublin Fringe Festival 2003, Project Arts Centre.
Looking beyond a calm exterior to a more profound quality of movement through the immediate emotion of the performer, we may observe the dancer as a real life person moving, communicating, expressing and feeling in a deeply personal way.
Matra (2002)
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. Also 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.
Matra is a collaborative piece of dance and live music. Dancer and musician worked closely dissecting and interpreting the complex rhythmic nature and gestural qualities of classical Indian dance and music forms. The result is an intoxicating merging of ancient and contemporary traditions.