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Meet the Awarded isacs Artists | Witness at Dublin Dance Festival

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The ISACS Network empowers, encourages and supports its members in their creative journeys by providing bursaries to attend events, workshops and masterclasses nationally and internationally.

Today, we are delighted to present Chloé Pisco and Sean McIlraith as the ISACS Members awarded the Bursaries to attend Witness with Taking Flight at Dublin Dance Festival.

Find out more about our spring callouts here→

Here is what they expect from their experience:

Every time I attend a festival I am so deeply inspired and invigorated by the work, especially this festival. I get I injected by a new burst of energy to keep fighting another day. With funding and projects you believe in.

In this global political climate it’s so good to be around your own tribe who make brave art about issues that matter and get you fired up. Makes you feel less alone and supported by the community we belong to.

I am dancer in equal parts to a circus and street artist. Even when I am with whales I dance. Its my favourite language.

-Chloé

Being able to watch shows from different artforms and contexts would greatly inspire my own works. I often try to find other movement forms and DDF has always made me walk away with such awe for the physical arts.

-Sean

Meet the Awarded Artists

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Sean McIlraith

Sean is an aerial artist and acrobat from Cape Town, South Africa, with a passion for combining physical performance with intimate storytelling. A graduate of Rogelio Rivel Circus School in Barcelona, she has performed across Ireland and pats of Europe over the past five years. In 2023, Sean co-created, directed, and performed he first full show RED LINES with Monika Palova at the Dublin Fringe Festival, earning acclaim and winning awards for Best Overall Production and Best Lighting. The show continues to evolve and will be presented at Panama Pictures in the Netherlands in December 2024.

Sean is also dedicated to social circus, working with children from underprivileged backgrounds and with disabilities. Her work blends the abstract and familiar, exploring the deeply human through live performance, she is hugely inspired by dance, but having no background in it works hard to improve these skills to round out her practice.

Headshot 1 Chloé Pisco Photo Credit Andrea Anieto Herrero

Chloé Pisco

Chloé Pisco has 24 years of dance, circus and physical theatre directing, performing and teaching. She did a Masters from DOCH, school of dance and circus at Stockholm University of the Arts, where she also taught circus directing to the BA programme.

After a decade of running 3 companies in Ireland, from 2012 she freelanced all over the globe, with lots work in Australia. She also wrote multiple courses, including delivering circus trainer training all over the globe. Her research, thesis and art have centred on the empathy hormone oxytocin. Chloé’s favourite work is collaborating in remote Australia with First Nations people.

From 2020 Chloé directed the global “Women in Circus Network”. She also dances underwater with wild humpback whales, who dance right back.

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