Photo: Eamonn O’Mahony
WHEN the tagline to an event for Bealtaine, the May festival celebrating creativity and age, reads: “‘Open O: Performing Silence’, a reflective space that provides for a simple encounter involving people, silence, chairs, movement and stillness”, there’s an impulse to head to that beautiful place.
Co-ordinated by two dance/ arts professionals in Limerick, ‘Open O: Performing Silence’ will be at Limerick City Gallery of Art on Thursday May 18, 6-7pm. We are each invited to take part, literally. There is no audience and no performance in the typical sense.
Working with Monica Spencer, Mary Nunan outlines what is going on.
“I am the Bealtaine dance artist in residence nationally for the year,” explains this gifted choreographer who is on The Arts Council. “There is a lot of focus for activity in Limerick as I am Limerick based.
“Liz Kelly, who is involved in curating and organising arts projects with various stakeholders, started a discussion on which groups we could work with. She suggested Monica Spencer [chair of The GAFF performance resource centre] could help because of her longstanding connections with communities in the city”.
Ultimately they arrived at King’s Island Community Centre. Its senior ladies assemble every Wednesday for tea and activity and “they said they would like to do dance”.
“It’s all about building relationships,” Nunan muses with respect to this and other Bealtaine exercises. “There is no outcome in terms of performance. We are doing a series of dance workshops that involve active participation of the women who come, between 10 and 15 of them”. Separate stuff is going on at different times and sites around the city.
“‘Open O: Performing Silence’ on the 18th is a reflective space between reflection and performance, an event where people gather.”
“We invite you to share a space with us. 30 minutes, in silence, together, performer and audience as both one and the other. The shared silence is followed by an open informal exchange, a change to speak or not – 30 minutes.”
“People invariably gather in a circle and the exchange that happens afterwards is very intriguing. Things we talk about are very different.”
See and perhaps hear you there?
