2024 Travels to Rue des Irlandais, and Ticino, Switzerland

I’ve been lucky enough lately to enjoy an inspiring artist residency at Centre Culturel, Irlandais, on Paris’ rue des Irlandais for the month of April; and a spookily magical week in the Ticino, following in the footsteps of 1940s Irish-German Modern Dance pioneer Erina Brady (1891 – 1961), and her fascinating Cavan father Terence Brady (1848 – 1937).

 

I thank Erina Brady for bringing me to such a staggeringly beautiful place. Upon my return to Éire, I contributed a very short presentation on this embryonic work in progress to a workshop entitled ‘Creative Histories of Migration’

 

at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick on Friday May 17th. The location was appropriate, given Casa Erina’s proximity to the Madonna del Sasso.  More of which anon.  Erina Brady’s utopian ethos had a twirl at Mary I previously in 2013 in the foyer of the Limetree Theatre alongside Imogen Stuart’s fine work in my ‘Bohemians’ exhibition thanks to Marie Hackett and Loic Guyon. In the meantime, ‘Damhsa na hÉigeandála’, my TG4 film about how Brady brought Mary Wigman’s modern dance ethos to Ireland during the Emergency was put on the syllabus in the German department by Sabine Egger.

Now that this preliminary short trip is done (involving glamorous overnight bus travel across Europe on my own dime), pending funding, I am planning a return trip to develop the project further – with outcomes in mind reclaiming our utopian dance legacy. Watch this space, and fingers crossed for fair winds in the sails of this important Swiss-Irish project….