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Divine Madness

Name: Divine Madness
Start: 2024-03-15T00:00:00+00:00
End: 2024-03-15T23:59:59+00:00

Dance and opera with Irish Modern Dance Theatre and award-winning soprano Mairéad Buicke

A dance-opera study of grief, revenge and love built around a soprano, three dancers and a live pianist. Divine Madness explores the physicality of the soprano in the context of dance, the singer exploring her practice beyond the concert recital.

The sound score centres on using fragmented operatic extracts from arias in a context of exile, loss and revenge, including Ave Maria from Verdi’s Otello, Vissi d’ Arte from Puccini’s Tosca, Ebben? n’andro lontana from Catalina’s La Wally, Morgen by Richard Strauss, O Mio Babbino Caro from Gianni Schicchi by Puccini, Song of the Moon from Dvorak’s Rusalka and None but the Lonely Heart (Op 6 No 6) by Tchaikovsky.

“Highly original and exploratory… every minute of the show is a reminder of the versatility, adaptability, resilience, discipline and strength of singers and dancers” – No More Workhorse

Choreography John Scott
Soprano Mairéad Buicke
Dancers Magdalena Hylak, Isabella Oberländer, Mufutau Yusuf
Pianist Aoife O’Sullivan
Lighting and Design Eric Wurtz

CAST BIOS

Mairead Buicke is a Limerick-born award-winning operatic soprano. She has performed major roles with English National Opera and worked with directors such as David Alden & Jonathan Miller a.o. and has performed with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, the Ulster Chamber Orchestra among many others.

Magdalena Hylak is a dance artist based in the West of Ireland. She is currently touring nationally and internationally with IMDT (FR). Since 2021, she has been developing her own body of work, which can be described as raw, repetitive, highly physical and emanating from within. Magdalena is the Arts Council of Ireland Dance Artist in Residence for Galway (2023-24).

Isabella Oberländer is a dance artist based in Limerick. Her performance practice is aligned with a wide range of queer feminist art-making. She has worked with Philip Connaughton, Lucy Suggate, Pietro Marullo & Laura Murphy. Her most recent collaborations include Bea McMahon’s ‘Another shot at love’ and Mary Maggic’s ‘faster, higher, stronger’. She is in ongoing collaboration with Fearghus Ó Conchúir and The Parsley Collective.

Mufutau Yusuf is a Nigeria-born Irish performer, choreographer, teacher, and curator. Mufutau Yusuf is a dancer with Ultima Vez in Belgium and in Ireland with Liz Roche Company, John Scott’s IMDT, United Fall, Catherine Young Dance a.o. He premiered his first full-length work ‘Òwe’ in 2022. Mufutau is an associate artist with Solstice Arts Centre and Liz Roche Company and a co-curator of the bi-monthly workshop platform ‘TW1’ (Train With One).

They will be joined at the piano by Aoife O’Sullivan. Aoife studied at the College of Music Dublin, the RIAM & TCD and was granted a Fullbright Scholarship to the Curtis Institute of Music. She has worked in the National Opera Studio in London and now is a lecturer in TUD Conservatoire and works regularly as repetiteur for Irish National Opera.