A DANCE
Uillinn Dance Season 2026

A DANCE I Magdalena Hylak

Thursday 22 October at 7:30pm I 20 mins I Warning: Loudness

Tickets available to purchase here. 

A DANCE is an immersive, site specific, non-story based, improvised performance, which invites the audience to a new form of ritual made from repetition, high physicality, loudness, sound glitches and noises.

A DANCE is an ongoing artistic research through raw movement and sound that translates into public performances, where both artists explore the relationships and tensions between public-personal, inside-outside, visible-invisible.

To date, A DANCE has been performed indoors and outdoors: in a black box, a white cube, a traditional Irish Pub at the far west border of Europe, in supermarket’s car parks, in the display window of a resident’s living room, in a shop unit.

BIOGRAPHY

Magdalena Hylak is a dance artist based in Ireland. She began her professional career in 2011 by working with Michael Keegan Dolan (IE), Liz Roche (IE) and Lea Anderson (UK) as part of Step Up Dance Project. She worked with Ríonach Ní Néill (IE), Catherine Young Dance (IE), Emma Martin (IE) and Akiko Kitamura (JP) before starting touring nationally and internationally with John Scott | Irish Modern Dance Theatre (IE) and Nacera Belaza (FR), as a core collaborator, with over 220 performances across 14 countries.

Since 2021, Magdalena is developing her own body of work, where she questions the notion of performance. At the core of her research are movement and sound outside of style/genre or technique, the exploration of spaces in-between and the relationships and tensions between public and personal, inside and outside, visible and invisible.

In 2022, with associated composer Lionel Kasparian, Magdalena created A DANCE, an ongoing artistic research through raw movement and sound that translates into public performances in unconventional spaces. This work found its way to festivals in Ireland, France and Luxembourg across 2023-2025. 

In 2025, she choreographed a duet STANDING as part of a dance programme including symposium + performances, which she curated for Galway, Ireland. In September 2026 Magdalena will show her first ensemble piece at Dance Limerick.

Magdalena has been commissioned by Galway Dance Days (2012), Galway Dance (2016, 2020, 2021), Clifden Arts Festival (2022, 2023) and Tipperary Dance International Festival (2023). She is the recipient of funding from the Arts Council of Ireland (Agility Award 2021; Commission Award-GDP 2021; Dance Bursary Award 2022, 2023; Project Award 2026), the Galway County Council (Artist Support Scheme 2022, 2024) and the National Dance Residency Partnership 2023. She has been Galway Dance Artist in Residence since 2023 (Dance Artist Residency Scheme 2023-2026). She is Dance Limerick’s Associate Artist 2026.

Lionel Kasparian has been the composer associated with Magdalena Hylak’s choreographic project in Ireland since 2022.

Born in Marseilles-France, he’s a graduate from the National Music Conservatory of Marseilles (electroacoustic music composition) and Nadia & Gilles Touché Drum School (Aix-en-Provence).

He began his career with instrumental improvisation in connection with new technologies, before developing his skills in sound design and with immersive sound systems. In his work, he questions the collective aspect of human existence from the prominent place of the personality of the individual, with a special focus on people on the margins of society. His creations are often surrounding themes of introspection and intimacy.

In 2003, he founded Art-Temps Réel, a non-profit organisation that develops activities ranging from the production of musical works, to the production of events, including the transmission in educational workshops. In 2006, he developed a 42-speaker orchestra, which became his main instrument for immersive concert proposals. Since 2010, the organisation has been dedicated to the development of participatory creative projects aimed at reaching diverse audiences in a given territory. These artistic projects have a strong political dimension and aim to express a questioning of social norms. 

Between 2010 and 2013, he was the composer associated with Christophe Haleb’s choreographic project. Over the same period, he also has worked as a composer and producer for the 2013 European Capital of Culture, across a variety of projects in Marseilles: from the opening night show to long-term collaborative productions. This resulted in development of similar projects in other cities (Aix-en-Provence and Vitrolles) between 2014 and 2017, including sharing his expertise with public cultural institutions. Since 2017, he has renewed his direction of work in experimenting alternative artistic and compositional intentions, through solos or collaboratively.

CREDITS

Magdalena Hylak – choreography/movement

Lionel Kasparian – live sound

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Supported by the Arts Council (Project Award 2026)

Image Credit: A DANCE photograph by Tom Flanagan