Dances with Whales
Uillinn Dance Season 2025

Dances with Whales I Directing/ Choreography: Film, Dance, Underwater – Chloé Pisco
Co-Creation: Local Multimedia / Film – Tomasz Madajczak

Friday 31 October I 9:00pm I free entry I

Short films looped for one hour outdoors on Uillinn

A series of short films presented as outdoor projections by filmmaker and choreographer Chloé Pisco with multimedia film artist Tomasz Madajczak. Pisco’s research blends science and art into interspecies communication following nine weeks underwater with wild humpback whales in Tonga and Australia.

About the Artist/ Company

Chloé Pisco is a Basque, Sicilian woman raised in West Cork from a young age. For the last 24 years, Chloé has been creating, performing, teaching and most of all directing: dance, circus, spectacle and immersive theatre hybrid works – as a full time career, around the globe.

In 2018, Chloé did her 2 year Masters by research at DOCH school of circus and dance, Stockholm University of the Arts. Here she also taught directing and creation tools for circus/dance making. Originally creating this as a full time 3 month directing course commissioned by the Dept of Arts and Culture WA, Australia. Spending three months writing it and collecting hundreds of creation tools. She later also developed in depth teacher training for circus and aerial, delivering it all over Australia. As well running a handful of circus schools. Chloé also spent years developing new movement language in her own unique bespoke bungee contemporary dance harnesses.

Going back to the beginning, after a decade of professional Classical ballet work at the same time as choreographing hundreds of parades for “Craic Na Coilte” street theatre – she studied at Alvin Ailey School of dance at Fordham University NYC from 1999.

She then ran her own companies, all receiving project funding and full time year round, anchor residencies in performance centres (with theatres): First “Rebus” a live contact improv dance co. with voice, followed by “No Frontiers Dance co.” an anti racism dance company boasting 42 nationalities and 60 original creations; and then “The Flying dance company”, an aerial theatre dance hybrid.

She performed the contemporary dance works of Batsheva dance co., Alvin Ailey co. II, William Forsythe, Marrugeku dance theatre (Aus), Daghdha dance co (Ire) and beyond.

Creative directing her own original works, (as well as creative producing them), with casts of 1 up to 300 live performers. In places as varied as: A Stockholm black box theatre, to the centre of the red Deserts in Australia, to parades in front of millions on the streets of Dublin, to Windsor Castle estate suspended from a 1000 year old Oak tree, from the red box at Legs on the Wall Sydney, to rigged over the Indian ocean in, Exmouth Western Australia, to the facade of the Ningaloo Marine research building, to her BMX ballet on huge skate ramps on the streets of Cork, to a 101 metre long, 12 metre high tightwire in the Ausie Bush, from a 30 metre rope rigged to St Paul’s Church in Bristol to the circus field at Glastonbury and most recently dancing underwater …

Chloé worked with Australian First Nations Artists over the last decade including with Marrugeku, with Pundara dance directed by Janine Oxenham, (a Malgana Yamatji woman), with the Blackrobats in Kuranda, as well as in remote communities such as Burringurrah (WA), Arlparra, Ampilatwatja, Alpurrurulam (Barkley and NT), Millimgimbi (Arnhem land) and many more. Co-Creating full length shows and short dance, Hip Hop and circus films collaboratively with locals, driven by the subjects and stories they are passionate about. This is wholeheartedly her favourite work on earth.

Her research career began in 2013 with an obsession around our own mammalian empathy neurochemistry: All centering around the hormone Oxytocin.It is our empathy, compassion, love, connection, trust, awe and bonding hormone.

Credits

Director – Chloé Pisco
Multimedia artist – Tomasz Madajczak
Performers – Wild humpback whales of South Pacific, Wild birds of West Cork, Dominique Abraham, Asher Bowen Saunders, Chloé Pisco

Acknowledgments

We wish to acknowledge the support of Cork County Council Arts Office and their Bursary Award

Support from the Uillinn West Cork Arts Centre and their whole talented team

+ Circus Factory Cork for residency and tech support

+ the Irish Aerial Creation Centre for immeasurable support and residencies.

Filming
Lucy Dawson

Edit
Lucy Dawson
+ later edit add ins by Jesse Bowen Saunders

Music credits:
(Composition and performance.)
Real bio-acoustic recordings of wild whale song from Migaloo’s songline.

An Oxytocin productions work

Image Credit: Dominique Abraham, Tonga.