Curated by Director of Dance Limerick, Mary Wycherley, and delivered under the guidance of Rehearsal Director, Lucia Kickham, Step Up 2026 welcomes Mufutau Yusuf as choreographer.
Ella Daly returns to her role as costume designer and project manager, which she will share with Gill NicConmara, who will also act as stage manager. We also have the pleasure of having Composer Tom Lane and Lighting Designer Gavin Byrne on board this year.
The Dance Limerick team will be working closely with the Step Up team throughout the six weeks of the programme. Production Manager Seán Murray; Production Assistant Liz O’Connell; Company and Operations Manager Catherine Ireton, Community Engagement Producer Katy Hewison and Communications Coordinator Leonor Miralles complete the team that will help deliver Step Up 2026.
Learn more about the Step Up team:
MUFUTAU YUSUF – Choreographer
Mufutau Yusuf is a Nigerian Irish performer, choreographer, and teacher based between Ireland and Brussels. A resident choreographer with Luail – Ireland’s national dance company, and a member of Aosdána, his recent works Òwe and Impasse have toured internationally receiving critical acclaim. His choreographic practice engages with questions of identity, ancestry, ritual, and embodied and collective memory, combining rigorous research and embodied experimentation to produce work that resonates across communities and fosters dialogue between tradition and contemporary performance.
LUCIA KICKHAM – Rehearsal director
Lucia Kickham is a County Wexford-based dance artist. Trained in the Netherlands, she has worked with Company Philip Connaughton, Junk Ensemble, Liz Roche Company, Maria Nilsson Waller, Laura Murphy, TRASH, Oonagh Kearney and Lore Films. Training intensively with David Zambrano in Flying Low and Passing Through techniques, Lucia has developed her interest in group dynamics within improvisation, composition and teaching environments. Lucia is a guest tutor at IWAMD and regularly leads workshops at dance centres across Ireland. She has been a recipient of awards from Dance Ireland, Tipperary Dance, Grand Studio Brussels, Tanztendenz Munich and the Arts Council of Ireland, including the Next Generation and Commission Awards.
As a performer Lucia has toured extensively across the island and abroad and has presented her own work at Dublin Dance Festival, Dublin Fringe Festival, side.kicks Festival Munich, Modes of Capture Symposium. Lucia was commissioned to create a site-responsive work Walk With Me in Enniscorthy as part of Luail’s To This I Belong project in their 2025 Programme. She has been the rehearsal director with Step Up Dance Project since 2022 and is very happy to return again this year.
TOM LANE – Composer
Tom Lane is a composer based in Dublin. He creates music for theatre, dance, opera and screen. Recent work includes music for The Fifth Sun choreographed by Mufutau Yusuf for Luail – Ireland’s National Dance Company at the 2026 Dublin Dance Festival. Tom also worked with Mufutau Yusuf to create music for Impasse which premiered in Dublin Dance Festival in 2024.
Recent composition for theatre includes music for the world premiere of Do You Come From Gomorrah by Frank McGuinness at the Abbey Theatre in 2026. In 2025 his new contemporary operatic score for Her Father’s Voice by writer Shane O’Reilly was performed as part of Dublin Theatre Festival. Further credits include composition for The Tragedy of Macbeth at London’s Almeida Theatre starring Saoirse Ronan and Hamlet at Dublin’s Gate Theatre and St Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn, starring Ruth Negga.
ELLA DALY – Project Manager & costume Designer
Ella Daly is a Producer, Writer and Designer from Limerick. Ella began her career with Daghdha Dance Company and has worked across several organisations locally and nationally since then, She is currently pursuing a practice-based PhD in playwrighting at the University of Galway, and coordinates various festivals and cultural events in the city and county. She designs costumes for film, theatre, puppetry and dance. She is coordinator for Step Up and also costume designer.
GILL NIC CONMARA – Stage Manager & Project Manager
Gill NicConmara is a company stage manager, producer, and artistic programmer based in Limerick. She specialises in stage management, company management, production coordination, and artistic curatorship. Gill holds a BA in Contemporary and Applied Theatre Studies from Mary Immaculate College and is a recent graduate of Performing Arts Forum.
Recent stage management credits include Jilly Morgan’s Birthday Party and Red Army (Lime Tree Theatre); The Summer I Robbed a Bank and Gatman (The Everyman and Dublin Fringe Festival); The Bus (Barnstorm); and Found (BrokenCrow and The Everyman, in association with Cork Midsummer Festival and Clonmel Junction Arts Festival). She was also part of the creative team and stage manager behind The Crow’s Way (Moonfish Theatre / Dublin Fringe / Baboró International Arts Festival for Children). Gill also produced Moonfish Theatre’s Why The Moon Travels (GIAF 2025) and is currently taking part in Branar’s Meitheal programme “ A dynamic support programme for artists and producers creating work for young audiences across the performing arts disciplines.”
Step Up Dance Project is a partnership between the Arts Council, Dance Limerick, the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick and Dance Ireland. Step Up’s participation in the placement programme is possible thanks to a partnership with Luail – Ireland’s National Dance Company
