Award winning artist Emily Aoibheann, uses aerial dance and circus arts as tools to explore contemporary ideas of all kinds; philosophical, social, ecological, historical, magical. Her varied background and practice lead to highly creative and collaborative integrations of multiple art forms. The work is often realised with a broad artistic and technical team, necessary to realise the significant ambition, scale and quality of productions. Emily’s recent work concerns bodies without context and ‘dances of dissolution’; transience and trace making; the heart and spine; presence, embeddedness, dwelling, and death; and a renewed practice of experimental writing and music making.
Her work in 2022 is supported by the Arts Council, as a Markievicz Award recipient, Fingal County Council, Dance Ireland, Project Arts Centre, Courthouse Arts Centre and Mermaid Arts Centre.
Current work:
Turrus
With long-time collaborator, digital artist 1iing heaney, I have been exploring the usurpation of the real by the virtual, adapting motion and spatial data capture merged with 3D animation to reveal previously unseen, uncanny, lurid and strange internal landscapes and dances of dissolution. We plan to continue the development of this work over the next two years, aiming for future performance and film presentation in 2024. Other collaborators involved in this project include artist Robert Mirolo, musician and sound designer Oliver Moloney, Algorithm creative production studio and Tentacle Films production company.
A Year of the Heart
In 2022, I begin development of a new project Death: A Year of the Heart, which delves into themes and material of transformation, ecstasy and courage, with music, dance imagined at scale. This aerial fabric centred piece incorporates ambitious stage design, immersive audience experience and written text to be adapted musically. The project takes the spine and heart as choreographic and visual starting points, which extend outward for dramatic, immersive and expansive live production.
Previously:
Object Piggy (2013-2015); Papaveracea (2015); Sorry Gold (2019); Mother of Pearl (2019). Director, PaperDolls (2010-2013); Co-founder and Director, Cat’s Paw Experimental Aerial Dance Meeting, Slovakia; Director, Creation Aerial studio and school (2014 – 2020); Director, Experimental Circus Bursary Award (2022); Artist in Residence at The Courthouse Arts Centre, Tinahely, Co. Wicklow, ongoing since 2018.