Commissioned for the 15th edition of Dublin Dance Festival, Session is the culmination of a three-year collaboration catalysed by the Festival.

This is a rare opportunity to see a performance by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, an exceptional dance artist who fuses eclectic influences including martial arts, hip hop, Kathak and jazz into his unique choreographic style.

In Session, these two highly accomplished and diverse performers draw from the rich rhythmical and sonic aspects of Colin Dunne’s traditional Irish dance to discover their relational possibilities through the exploration of sound.

The lines between movement and music, seeing and listening become a source of play, as Dunne and Cherkaoui create new modes of sound-making, ranging from the graceful to the absurd.

They are joined on stage by composer Michael Gallen and musician Soumik Datta. Gallen’s score draws upon a diversity of sonic and musical sources, threading the melodic eccentricities of percussive dance, timbral noise and sean-nós ornamentation into a larger soundworld that includes overlapping pianos and strings, electroacoustic textures and polyphonic choral performance.

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Produced by Eastman, Once Off Productions & Théâtre National de Bretagne.
Co-commissioned by Dublin Dance Festival, the Abbey Theatre, Sibiu International Theatre Festival, Julidans, Noorderzon Performing Arts Festival, MC93 – scène nationale de Seine-Saint-Denis – Bobigny, Torinodanza, deSingel – Antwerp, Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg, Sadler’s Wells – London, Schauspiel Köln.
With the support of the Fondation BNP Paribas, General Representation of the Government of Flanders in the United Kingdom and Ireland, the Belgian Federal Government’s Tax Shelter programme and the Arts Council of Ireland/An Chomhairle Ealaíon.

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Images © Koen Broos