Nóra Ní Anluain Fay
Nóra Ní Anluain Fay
Please Break My Heart
8 to 12 September 2025
Please Break my Heart, is an interdisciplinary solo piece, fusing dance, text, theatre and film. This love story focuses on the quest for true love purely for the sake of wanting to discover how it feels to have your heart truly and utterly broken.
Based on the fact that all the classic films, books, plays and songs are all about love and heartbreak – trying to actively get my heart broken in order to have content for a piece. After all, aren’t all the best works of art centred around love and heartbreak? Saturated with drama, comedy and chaos, giddily marching towards a broken heart to understand what is this endless pit of inspiration for makers called heartbreak?
I’ll develop my new work Please Break my Heart, in collaboration with local community groups connected with Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre.
I’ve built a strong relationship with Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre starting with a residency there in 2023 for my most recent work Ham Sandwiches and Discipline. It explores the world of the GAA and I collaborated with the local club O’Donovan Rossa to develop it. The piece has since toured festivals nationally and internationally. I’m confident I can have that same success with my next work as Uillinn is an environment where I know my practice flourishes.
Please Break my Heart, is a solo piece which I’ll create and perform driven by dance, fused with text and film.
This love story centres on the quest for true love for the sake of wanting to discover how it feels to have your heart broken. Saturated with drama, comedy and chaos it’s a woman marching towards a broken heart to understand why heartbreak is an endless pit of inspiration for makers? It’s an artist questioning when do the lines blur between living and creating?
The first draft of the work (20minutes) was at Scene and Heard Festival in Smock Alley Theatre February 2025. A key part of this festival is getting audience feedback which’ll be imperative in guiding how I’ll develop the piece on residency, particularly as it’s a solo work.
I’m really excited to open up the studio to have discussions with people from ranging ages and backgrounds about this universal theme of love and heartbreak which I know will enhance the work incredibly. See here for details of how you can participate.
By working in this way I’ll be able to enrich my own practice as a maker and develop a high quality dance work infused with the voice of the Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre community.
Nóra Ní Anluain Fay is a performer, choreographer and the director of NAF Dance. Her work bridges dance, theatre, music and film resulting in theatrical explosions marrying camp and comedy, slapstick and physical theatre.
Her first piece Let Them Eat Cake, represented the Netherlands in Szoloduo Festival 2022 Budapest. Cementing the tone of NAF Dance and all her work since has been performed across Europe.
Her latest Ham Sandwiches and Discipline, toured festivals nationally and internationally in 2024 and was nominated for 3 Dublin Fringe Awards. With a national tour in autumn 2025, it’ll then be made into a film.
@nafdance @noranianluainfay
This residency is supported by Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre and The Crespo Foundation.
WCAC acknowledges the financial support of Cork County Council and The Arts Council in making these residencies possible.
Nóra Ní Anluain Fay
3 June to 16 June 2023
I aim to spend this residency programme developing and researching my work ‘You Gotta trust that the future is going to be a bit Sexy.’ It premiered on the 2nd of June 2023 in the Theatre de It festivals across Ireland and the Netherlands from June to November including Uillinn Dance Season 2023.
A dance and theatre piece shown through the format of a black and white film with text, projections and chapters, it tells the story of coming of age. By dissecting its interdisciplinary nature I can expand and propel my practice as a whole.
As my work lies in the bridge between theatre, film, text, music and dance, my understanding of my practice is ever expanding. As I continue to produce and research work that blurs the boundaries between mediums and disciplines I feel the need to take time to sit, clarify and enhance how this culminates physically. To conduct this research I will spend time in the studio and immersing myself in other makers’ work.
My choreographic practice fuses multiple mediums together and so my understanding of how my practice is defined is ever expanding. As I continue to produce work that blurs the boundaries between disciplines I feel the need to take time to clarify and enhance how I bring them together.
It would be a refreshing and necessary shift for me to have space to prioritise exploration in my practice without the immediate pressure to generate concrete results. In turn each project will become more fruitful and my practice more sustainable.
I draw from such varying sources – books, films, theatre, people watching – as I make. To have an incubated space to consume and pour myself into relevant references would be paramount for where I am now. In particular Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Michael Keegan Dolan and Dolly Alderton. To dissect how they marry beautiful contradictions would be invaluable.
Nóra Ní Anluain Fay is the artistic director of NAF Dance and graduated from Fontys University, the Netherlands, in dance and choreography. Her work bridges dance and theatre, fusing music, text and film. Her debut piece, ‘Let Them Eat Cake,’ represented the Netherlands at Szoloduo Festival 2022 Budapest. Cementing her movement language of physical theatre and slapstick comedy while marrying humour and tragedy.
‘You gotta trust the future is gonna be a bit Sexy,’ 2023, toured festivals in the Netherlands and Ireland. Her latest ‘Ham Sandwiches and Discipline,’ premiered at Scene and Heard Festival 2024 before going to the Centre Culturel Irlandais and Galway Theatre Festival.
Instagram – @nafdance
Nóra Ní Anluain Fay
Ham Sandwiches and Discipline
17 to 31 July 2023
Sean O’Toole talked to Nóra and Sorcha about their residency at Uillinn. Read the blog post here: https://uillinnwestcorkartscentre.blogspot.com/2023/08/ham-sandwiches-and-discipline-chat-with.html
I grew up watching and going to GAA matches and being immersed in the world of it. There often seems to be a wide gap between the realms of the arts and sports but having grown up with a mixture of both I want to try to combine them, which isn’t always done. I will spend this residency creating a duet with myself and my longtime collaborator Sorcha Murphy about the GAA which will premiere in September. There is also such a raw theatricality to sports and its spectators and clear dramaturgical lines to matches that I would adore to delve into. The rich culture that pours from the GAA is calling to be explored, from the ham sandwiches wrapped in tin foil, 30 jerseys hanging out to dry on the line, the sound of the soaking muddy stud boots, completely vexed commentators, screaming from the sidelines in the bitter cold to the ritualistic trips to Croke Park. The 70 minute structure of a match provides the perfect arc for a piece.
I want to delve into the whole marathon of emotions that goes through a piece, the training beforehand, pep talk in dressing rooms, kickoff fans reaction, halftime, sponsors, end result, the commentators and post match analyst battles and explore how this can be translated into a theatrical dance setting. I wish to fully showcase the world of the GAA in a theatrical format as I utterly see the two working as a harmonious marriage. I also know that there is such a big audience for the GAA and it would be valuable to make a dance piece readable for those who don’t always go to them.
Cork is notorious for its love of the GAA which makes it the perfect place for this creation. I think it would also be very fruitful to collaborate with the local club, O’Donovan Rossa for both the piece and the community. Dance continues to become a bigger part in sports training and strengthening as more and more teams are turning to it for support. Therefore we will have dance workshops with the club, and feed their knowledge into the piece. They can see and make the connections themselves between the game and the material. We will create weekly sessions between members of the club to share what we have done and open up the conversation to what they would like to see and what they would feel would be relevant to have in the piece. At the end of the residency we will have an open showing of everything we have created and they will act as a collaborator in the work.
The bridge between dance and theatre is where I get excited to work. I draw from many mediums such as film, literature, music, dance and physical theatre to create my work for NAF Dance in which I am the Artistic Director. I will graduate from the choreography department in Fontys University Tilburg, the Netherlands in July and be based between Ireland, the Netherlands and France.
My first piece Let Them Eat Cake, was chosen to represent the Netherlands in the Szoloduo Festival 2022 in Budapest. Working on this cemented my movement language of physical theatre and slapstick comedy.
instagram @noranianluainfay
vimeo – https://vimeo.com/user112495201
