by Rose Rushe
APART from but included in the published programme for November 6-9’s Light Moves festival of Screendance, ‘Starting with a T’ is an independent film project. It was created by and pioneered over a year by choreographer, and now Arts Council member, Mary Nunan, with many others.
On Monday nights, a group of c.30 women from Moyross, Castletroy, Southill, wherever, met for workshops in Dance Ireland on John’s Square that led into the compilation of ‘Starting with a T’. A ball of wool is the yarn that connects each ‘moving portrait’ in this Made in Limerick feature.
Opening in FabLab, Rutland Street on Thursday October 30 at 7pm, its 25minutes will spool six days a week on two screens, from 11am to 5pm for a month.
“For all its size, it was very intimate at the end,” Nunan feels. “There was a lovely quality to the project, the listening to and touching, and I hope people will find its impact has a quiet power”.
She describes the ‘Starting with a T’ women as “very open and integrated”, the wool yarn a metaphor for “going under the skin of the narrative to connect us”.
Workshops concerned dance, movement; text and writing were led by Monica Spencer. Fragments of became a soundscape to the film, with a musical layer created by Light Moves curator, Jurgen Simpson.
Mary Nunan points to the collaborative partnerships that made the whole: local communities, FabLab, Limerick City Gallery of Art and more. Culture Factory, where the filming was done, its exploration of spatial relationships and connectivity, was a source of “stories by women of the place when it was a greenfield, before Wang, before Dell where they had relatives working”.
She says there are multiple readings of and feelings to this film installation that was enabled by visual artists and theatre people also. “It’s completely of Limerick, almost a weave, you could say”.
Attendance is free daily, October 30 to November 29.
