Ghent – Dancephere

February 6th – 7th, 2025 Kunstencentrum VIERNULVIER, Ghent
March 7th, 2025 Festspielhaus St. Pölten, St. Pölten
April 24th – 25th, 2025 Lieu Unique, Nantes
May 9th – 10th, 2025 Sadler’s Wells, London
May 14th – 17th, 2025 Dublin Dance Festival, Dublin
June 24th – 27th, 2025 Théâtre de la Ville, Paris
120 minutes

Meat, Sorrow and Irish Sounds

Part fiction, part biographical, all elements are overlapping, and it will become difficult to determine what’s myth and what’s reality.

It goes back to a time when families worked in the abattoirs of Belfast. Pigs in the garden of New lodge.

There’s something in the meat of me, bloodline, there is a pink fleshy vulnerability to me, to dancing, there is a violence in me.

This new show will follow the story of Oona’s Great Great Grandfather Specky Clark and his arrival in Belfast.

For this piece which will be unfolding in a series of theatrical images, Oona Doherty will collaborate with many faithful and new partners. The production features music from Irish band Lankum, Gavino Murgia and David Holmes & Raven Violet. Maxime Jerry Fraisse is sound designer, Irish playwright Enda Walsh is dramaturg, Sabine Dargent is set designer, Darius Dolatyari-Dolatdoust is costume designer and long-time collaborator John Gunning is lighting designer. The piece will be performed by an international cast of 9 dancers.

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Care, Romance, Fluid Identity and Fantasy

O amor natural goes beyond the binary codes of yes and no and explores consent in all its non-verbal richness: whispers, body temperature, breathing, gaze and speed of movement weave a web of intimacy. The concept of consent raises many questions about care practices, but also about sexual and artistic practices. How do we know and how do we communicate what we do and do not want? On what basis can we consent to a practice that is still foreign to us?

For people with disabilities, touch is often associated with a medical act, as if their bodies are objects to be manipulated and moved without regard to their physical and emotional needs, in a relationship that is necessarily devoid of any sensuality. O amor natural is about giving ourselves the chance to express the complexity of touch in our relationships, where we often only allow ourselves to conceive of touch in a medical or sexualised relationship.