Dance & Climate Action – A Guilt Free Conversation
A panel and workshop exploring dance and the role of artists in climate action. Bringing together individuals working in dance and the arts in Ireland to discuss their work, and making new work, in relation to the biggest single threat of our time. Maria Nilsson Waller, Rita Marcalo, Stephanie Dickenson and Maeve Stone, in conversation with Lisa McLoughlin, will discuss the role of the dance community in addressing the changing environment.
After the panel, speakers and guests will work together to create a Dance (non-guilt inducing) Climate Manifesto 2020, where we imagine a future in which dance creates dynamic and radically creative solutions, and practical steps to a healthier future.
Panel Biographies
Lisa McLoughlin
Trained at the Rambert School, London. Lisa has performed extensively nationally and internationally with companies such as the Liz Roche Dance Company, Daghdha, Coisceim, Marguerite Donlon and dancers, IMDT and Opera Ireland. Her most recent choreography The kindness of Strangers was commissioned by Live Collision, international festival of Live Art, 2019. In this durational work she walked with 184 people across Ireland. Lead artist and designer of The Autonomy Project, 2018, a multi-genre project encompassing the work of over a 100 young people, artists and academics (funded by the Arts Council of Ireland, commissioned by the Limerick Arts office). Board member of the Dublin Dance Festival and the Liz Roche Company. Lisa is a guest lecturer in Dance at the Irish World academy and holds a first-class honours MA in dance and is completing an Arts Practice PhD at the University of Limerick Funded by the Irish Research Council of Ireland. She is the mother of three wonderful children.
Stephanie Dickenson
Stephanie Dickenson is one of Ireland’s most experienced arts publicists, having worked in the sector for 20 years. She has particular expertise with the dance sector, with artists producing work for younger audiences, and with artists and organisations interested in addressing social issues. She has become engaged in a range of eco initiatives, from Extinction Rebellion to the Green Party, and has a particular interest in the ability of local communities to effect change.
Rita Marcalo
Instant Dissidence is an Ireland-based company directed by Rita Marcalo, the creative force behind ‘Dancing With Strangers’. Through Instant Dissidence, Rita brings people together inventing unusual art experiences and means by which to solve creative problems. Instant Dissidence is also a socially-engaged and ecologically-engaged company exploring the role that dance/choreography can play as a social engine.
Maeve Stone
Maeve is a Writer-Director for film and theatre, whose work responds to issues of climate, and revisits the canon with a feminist lens. She is currently the embedded artist for a European Cultural Adaptation project which asks “What is the role of the artists in Climate Adaptation”. As such she has been observing international examples of how arts and cultural communities adapt to climate change and mitigate their carbon footprint on the way there. Her own project seeks to shift the paradigm in how we view older people in the climate conversation, reconnecting Elders and placing them in conversation with youth activists. She will work with Codema (the energy agency for Dublin) and Axis Ballymun for the next year with a number of planned outcomes.
Maria Nilsson Waller
Is a dance artist, choreographer and designer. With work described as pure emotion, mesmerising and profound again and again she draws our attention to our relationship to nature and the environment, examining the borders between the known and unknown, science versus faith and mythology. Over the past 10 years her work has been presented at a number of national and international venues in France, Sweden, U.K and Ireland. She was elected Hoffnungsträgerin 2015 by Tanzmagazin, and was a Dance Ireland Associate Artist 2013/2014. She has been running Flora Fauna Project since 2017 together with composer Stace Gill.
