Professional classes with Rita Marcalo

Rita Marcalo’s classes are challenging and encourage dancers to work against common learned dance movement patterns. The class reflects the training background and the personal movement style of the artist, placing an emphasis on movement phrases, co-ordination, risk-taking, and non-linear movement.

Rita Marcalo is the Artistic Director of Instant Dissidence, a dance company based in Cloughjordan Ecovillage. As a socially and ecologically engaged company, Instant Dissidence foregrounds the role of dance as a social engine. The company’s work resists the idea of art as an object produced by a special kind of person called the ‘artist’, and work is often co-created in dialogue with (and performed by) non-professional artists about issues which matter to them.

Works by Instant Dissidence have gained national and international acclaim and been presented at: 2018/19 – The Rebellion (Arts Council of England, Northern School of Contemporary Dance). 2019/20 – Dancing The Virus Apocalypse (Arts Council of England, CLAY). 2020/21 – Borrisokane Is Dancing (Communities Integration Fund, Dance Ireland). 2021/2022-... As If Trying Not To Own The Earth (Dublin Dance Festival, Bealtaine Festival, Dublin City Council, Arts Council of Ireland). 2022/2023 – SlowMo (Perform Europe).

Marcalo was the selected Irish artist by CROWD-International Dance Exchange and the Centre Culturel Irlandais. In 2023 Instant Dissidence received one of the inaugural Culture Moves Europe’s Residency Hosts Grants (Creative Europe), enabling the company tohost a Performance & Ecological Practice Residency in Cloughjordan Ecovillage in 2024, in partnership with performance artists from Slovenia andFrance.2024 will see Marcalo working with Wendy Houstoun, Emilyn Claid and Pete Shenton as mentors for a new work titled 12,600 Days.

Fridays 10, 24 & 31 May | 12 – 1.30 pm