All the Relations by Angie Smalis and Colin Gee

‘All the Relations’ is a work of story-based dance featuring eight dancers, a narrator and live music, about an event in a small town. It focuses on sources of personal conflict to deepen our experience of the many characters involved and explore a new perspective on demographic shifts brought on by climate change, while also exposing the interconnectedness between individuals through a larger sense of family, friends, community, nature, and species. 

Angie and Colin propose a new use of narrative in character-based dance and an opportunity to engage with novelistic storytelling technique, through movement. Their interest in the narrative potential of dance is to explore how the limitations of “persona” can be shown and to provoke the kind of ethical imagination a story addresses.

Learn more about the cast

ANGIE SMALIS trained and worked professionally as a dance artist in Greece before moving to Vienna, Austria in 2001 to join the Viennese Opera (VolksOper Wien). She relocated to Limerick in 2003 to join Daghdha Dance Company. She is an independent contemporary dance artist, Artistic Director of Limerick Youth Theatre, and Founder and Director of Patterns Dance Collective, a group of dance artists with intellectual disabilities under the auspices of AVISTA, Limerick. Angie’s work focuses on developing a methodology to express contemporary and universal concerns, through a character/place-based dance vocabulary, in collaboration with American Performing Artist, Colin Gee.

COLIN GEE was born in California and trained as an actor at the Dell’ Arte School of Physical Theater (1991-1992) and the Jacques Lecoq School in Paris (1994 – 1996), Colin Gee has received a Guggenheim Fellowship (2019), Rome Prize (2012), was the founding Whitney Live artist-in-residence at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and was the 2009 visiting artist-in-residence at the Cathedral Church of St John the Divine. He performed as a clown in the Cirque du Soleil production Dralion (2001-’04), and has created works for film, performance and opera since 2002.

SALMA ATAYA is a performer and choreographer. Growing up in Palestine, she worked with Saryyet Ramallah and the Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival and took part in local and international performances from 2012 to 2016. She has worked with Les ballets C de la B, KVS, A.M. Qattan Foundation, performing and touring in Belgium. In 2017 Salma graduated with an MA in Contemporary Dance Performance and since then she has worked with John Scott’s Irish Modern Dance Theatre, Catherine Young Dance Co, Séverine Chavrier, Théâtre d’Orléans, Paris, Justine Doswell and Mary Nunan.

MARK CARBERRY is a dance maker who collaborates with artists to explore and extend the peripheries of dance, improvisation and performance. His teaching and performance work is informed by his daily movement practice in somatic training and improvisation techniques, taking shape in the form of workshops, performances, installations and happenings.

MIA DICHIARO is a Dublin-based contemporary dancer, teacher, and activist whose ideas often circulate around participatory art and climate justice. Originally from New York, she received her dance training at the Ailey School and developed an interdisciplinary B.A. in ‘Performance and Arts Activism’ (NYU). After relocating to Ireland, she received a M.A. in ‘Contemporary Dance Performance’ (University of Limerick) and has since performed works by David Bolger, Liz Roche, Lucyna Zwolinska, Jack Webb, Ursula Robb, Paul White, Dina Abu Hamdan, and her own site-specific work.

PHILIPPA DONNELLAN is a choreographer based in Dublin. Originally from the UK, she is passionate about making dance theatre by engaging with people of all experiences and exploring themes that respond to the time and place in which we live. Between 2006 – 2020, Philippa was Director of CoisCéim BROADREACH with whom she led a range of projects in partnership with different institutions, organisations and communities.

YUMI LEE is an Ireland-based professional dancer, dance teacher and performer. Yumi holds a MA degree in Contemporary Dance Performance from the University of Limerick in Ireland. She started ballet training at 6 years old in South Korea and trained in jazz, traditional dance, aerial dance and contemporary dance. Yumi has worked with Winona Lin, Liz Roche Dance Company, Helga Deasy, Mary Nunan, Tobi Omoteso and Fearghus Ó Conchúir, amongst others.

RUTH LEHANE is an award-winning actress, writer and theatre maker. She has toured with her work internationally to Barcelona, Berlin, UK, Bulgaria, Romania and New York. Professionally acting/writing with many of Ireland’s top theatre/film companies, she received Best Female Performer Award, Dublin Fringe 2012. She studied at Trinity College, Dublin; École Jacques Lecoq, Paris; Sue Morrison, Toronto; and Eugene O’Neill Theatre Centre, Connecticut/New York.

PIUS MCGRATH is an Actor & Creative Producer from Limerick, he is Co-Director of Honest Arts Production Company, having written and toured original work Internationally since 2013. His company Honest Arts won the ‘Cutting Edge Artist Award’ in 2015 at The Toronto International Fringe Festival with the Irish Times Theatre Award nominated show ‘Waiting in Line’. His recent TV and Film work includes: FOUNDATION for AppleTV+, The Gates, directed by Stephen Hall, Gravedigger by Púca Bán Films and ‘STORMTROOPERS III’ with Cork Racing Productions.

ANDY CONNOLLY is a turntablist, composer & music producer, working mostly under the aliases of Deviant and/or Naïve Ted. He is a founder member of international turntablist collective Community Skratch & has been performing “skratch music” & producing electronic music since 2007. He has worked extensively as producer/collaborator/remixer for many Irish artists and he is the director at Unscene Music, a Limerick-based repository of hip-hop, electronic & experimental music.

ERIN GEE is a composer. Her awards for composition include a Herb Alpert Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, a Radcliffe Fellowship, the 2008 Rome Prize, the Charles Ives Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Zürich Opera House’s Teatro Minimo, and the Picasso-Mirò Medal from the Rostrum of Composers, a Fromm Foundation Commission, a Koussevitsky Commission and two Chamber Music America grants with Dal Niente and Ekmeles, among others. She has been commissioned by the Zurich Opera House for the opera SLEEP, by the Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna, the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group under Esa-Pekka Salonen, and for four pieces by Klangforum Wien.

GIORDANA GIACHE is a Lecturer of Fashion and Textile at Technological University of the Shannon/Limerick School of Art and Design. She is co-artistic director of Lumen Street Theatre and has been collaborating with Angie Smalis and Colin Gee, designing and making costumes for their productions since 2018.

MARTIN SHANNON is a painter, sculptor, and printmaker. He holds degrees in both Fine Art Sculpture and Printmaking, and a Masters degree in Fine Art from the Limerick School of Art and Design. He was selected for Ev+A in 2005, has had a residency in 411 Galleries in China, and has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally. Since 2016 he has been Artistic Director of Lumen Street Theatre, An award winning Street theatre company based in Limerick City.

CREDITS 

Lead artist/producer/choreographer Angie Smalis
Lead Artist/writer/dramaturge Colin Gee
Dance artists Angie Smalis, Colin Gee, Salma Ataya, Mark Carberry, Mia DiChiaro, Philippa Donnellan, Yumi Lee
Actor Ruth Lehane
Narrator Pius McGrath
Creative Advisor Ain Gordon
Archivist Cori Olinghouse
Composer/live music Andy Connolly
Composer Erin Gee
Musicians Diane Daly (violin), Aoife Nic Athlaoich (cello)
Music Producer Daragh Dukes
Set Designer Martin Shannon
Costume Designer Giordana Giache
Make-up artist Evan Kennedy
Photographer Shane Vaughn
Film artist Dominik Kosicki
Graphic Designer Alina O’Shaughnessy
Production Manager Kerrie Ahern
Lighting Designer Eloise Hickey
Communications Co-ordinators Emer Casey, Leonor Miralles

This project is funded under the Arts Council’s Arts Grant Funding 2023 and the Limerick City and County Council’s Strategic Award 2023 It is supported by Dance Limerick, Dance Cork Firkin Crane and the Irish Chamber Orchestra.