In Good Company

At this year’s Resolution Festival in London, one of the city’s major events of the dance calendar, I found myself in a conversation about the state of affairs of dance internationally. Among discussion of funding cuts and artistic directors behaving badly, I brought up the exciting news that Ireland was to have a national dance company for the first time in a long time. I was largely met with puzzlement. How is it that an island that has managed to produce one of the strongest theatrical traditions in the West could be without a national dance company?

Luail, Ireland's national dance company. Photograph by Patricio Cassinoni

While it is the first all-island company, operating both in Northern Ireland and the Republic, this is not Ireland’s first national company. The memory of the fate of the Irish Contemporary Dance Theatre and Irish National Ballet still feels fresh for those who were there to witness it.

“Funding for the arts council’s main dance clients was cut, all of that work was lost” says John Scott, artistic director of Irish Modern Dance Theatre, “and then for a long time, from the eighties up to the early noughties, a lot of Irish choreographers were very divorced from the international scene.”

Choreographer Liz Roche recalls it too, “You can still feel it all this time later that it was a big blow.” However, times and attitudes have seemingly changed. Following a string of international tours and accolades for Ireland’s dance ambassadors, the arts council has finally granted financial backing for a permanent company with Roche at the helm as artistic director.

Luail, meaning movement or motion in Irish, has already begun to get to work with community workshops, a family-friendly production, student collaborations and a tour of the duet “Impasse” by resident choreographer Mufutau Yusuf. Yusuf, who has already been winning acclaim early in his choreographic career, feels that the time is right for Luail:

“Dance in Ireland has been growing over the last decade or two, but I think the national dance company will propel that further. I see it being a benefit overall.” His first creation for the company, an exploration of “healing and transformation at the intersection of trauma, memory, and time,” will tour the island in May as part of a mixed bill. “Chora,” which also features works from Roche and the duo Guy Nader and Maria Campos, will be the ensemble’s first foray into production—“familiar territory” as Roche puts it.

Liz Roche, artistic director and choreographer of Luail. Photograph by Luca Truffarelli

Later in the year Luail will continue their campaign across Ireland, presenting a collaboration with multi-instrumentalist composer Lisa Canny, and the revival of Emma Martin’s “Dancehall” on its tenth anniversary. Reviving work from the Irish canon is of particular interest to Roche.

“The arts council funds new work, so this constant newness happens. That’s great, but artists reach a point where they wanna revisit things and settle into things, they wanna go at it again” she explains. “We want to give people that space, a bit of time to consider and go back to things.” She gazes up to her wall with a grin, “I keep looking up at our plans for ’26 and ’27 and ’28, lots of exciting collaborations are coming up.” This platforming with Ireland’s choreographers, both new and established, is of great importance to Roche, whose intention is to make Luail a “collaborative collective” for local artists.

An inward focus would matter for any national company, but is especially of interest to Ireland, which has been plagued by the emigration and brain drain of its young talent for decades. The island boasts only one institution providing third level contemporary dance training, the Irish World Academy in Limerick, and no secondary level conservatoire.

“Certainly, my generation didn’t have a choice” Roche laments—she studied in London. However, the hope is that a national company may grant young dancers the chance of a career without having to move abroad, something many could have only imagined.

“When talking to the dancers about being home and working every day, most of them say it's a relief to not have to run around all over the world to make it work” she notes, “some people love that, but for many it is a relief.” Yusuf, who trained in Austria, believes Luail’s presence may lead to more. “I think this will trickle down to the education system […] like in France you can’t have those conservatoires if you don’t have the companies, the resources, the infrastructure.”

Mufutau Yusuf, resident choreographer with Luail. Photograph by Alisson Rocha

Changing paths for young people may be one thing, but changing perceptions of audiences is a different task. While Ireland enjoys a strong theatrical history and a growing international reputation in contemporary dance, some may think that regional audiences simply are not ready for a touring contemporary dance company.

“I wonder if there’s a few older, lazier narratives we need to move on from” Roche muses, “the audience is there, it’s just about reaching them.” One manner of doing this is a pioneering ‘Dance Deputies’ programme in the rural southwest and northeast, where practitioners may “enrich the dance infrastructure in their areas.” The year-long commission “To This I Belong” has practitioners across the island develop community-focused projects, familiarising locals with what dance has to offer through participation. This “bespoke approach” according to Roche not only builds audiences, but enables dance artists to have more stability, “it isn’t about bringing everyone to Dublin, or down to Limerick or up to Belfast, it’s about supporting people to make work at home.”

Maintaining these ties across an island that is politically split is no small task. The Shared Island initiative, which “aims to harness the full potential of the Good Friday Agreement” according to the government of the Republic, funds cultural projects and infrastructural initiatives. While not officially tied to the initiative, Luail is riding the wave of cross-border ambition. The reality remains complicated, “in terms of support there’s great support for it, but some of the mechanics aren’t quite there yet […] with two different territories, being able to function across both of them is a challenge at times.” According to a report for the House of Lords Library, core UK government funding for the Northern Irish Arts Council fell by 66% between 2009/10 and 2022/23, with England’s only falling by 18%.

“Everyone is very clear in the North that they need more funding, especially for dance” says Roche. Despite the setbacks, sharing of resources increasingly seems to be the name of the game, and the support is ostensive. “I could see when we launched in Belfast in November that the good will is there […] there’s always been an easy connect across the island artistically.”

Arts funding anywhere, however, is never a guarantee. The Irish Arts Council is receiving a record-breaking €140 million from the government budget, but politics and economic uncertainty are still lurking in the background. Are there fears of the past repeating itself? For now, the mood is cautious but hopeful.

“I would like to think the arts council wants to increase the support for dance, and that by establishing a national company that is now happening” says Scott. Yusuf, who is based in Brussels, thinks that Ireland should be “learning from the mistakes made by other countries” when it comes to funding dance, “if we go about it calmly it could be a really beautiful road ahead.”

The woman leading the charge is indeed calm, but resolute in her belief in the company. “It brings a bit of bedrock into things, you mightn’t feel it just yet, but the act of it makes a difference. I know there are a lot of things going on and that the arts will always be defending itself — which is how it is, so that’s what we do,” she says. Anxieties and uncertainties aside, there is no doubt that many in Ireland’s dance community are willing Luail to succeed. For Liz Roche it is seemingly just as much about platforming Irish talent as it is giving the Irish people an art form to embrace as fervently as literature and music. “It’s another way of being in a complicated world […] I would like to think the next generation coming up have dance as a way to navigate it all.”

Luail will tour “Chora” to Dublin, Wexford, Belfast, and Cork from the 13th to the 28th of May.

Eoin Fenton

Eoin (they/he) is a dance maker and writer based in Cork (Rep. of Ireland), and London (UK). They have danced across Ireland and London in venues including The Place, Project Arts Centre Dublin and Galway Cathedral. Eoin graduated with a BA in Choreography from Middlesex University in 2024 and began writing as part of the Resolution Reviews programme. They are a regular contributor to A Young(ish) Perspective.

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In Good Company

Eoin Fenton

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