Embodied Creativity
Uillinn Dance Season 2026

Embodied Creativity | Dance and Health Workshop by Helga Deasy

Friday 6 November | 11:30 am to 1:30 pm

Tickets available to purchase here.

This experiential workshop offers an introduction to Embodied Creativity.

Drawing on her experience of working as a dance artist in healthcare settings, Helga will begin with a short presentation exploring the ideas and philosophy that underpin her practice: she will introduce a somatic approach to empowerment and transformation and share examples of how embodied approaches to creativity can support connection, wellbeing and a sense of agency.

We will then move into a practical, playful movement session, exploring the somatic principles of breath’, ‘touch’, connectivity within the body and into the ground’ and ‘imagery and imagination’. Through gentle movement and sensory exploration, we will awaken our bodily awareness and discover how this awareness can become a starting point for creative expression.

The session will include gentle seated warm-ups and centring exercises, playful movement with props, and an introduction to creating choreography through imagery and imagination.

Biography

Helga Deasy (Ireland/Germany) is a choreographer, dance artist and dance facilitator. Exploring themes of identity, belonging, migration and care through the immediate expressive potential of the moving body, her practice encompasses performance making, cross-disciplinary collaboration and socially engaged dance. It is grounded in choreological studies and her research into somatic practices and empowerment.

With a passionate belief in the transformative and empowering potential of dance, community engaged work forms an integral part of Helga’s creative practice.

She has been a lead facilitator on the Teacher / Artist Partnership Programme since 2016 and an early-years arts practitioner with Graffiti Theatre Company since 2021.

Helga has worked extensively in arts and health and arts and older age settings. Since completing a specialised training in dance in end of life care with Rosetta Life in 2012 she has delivered a range of creative movement projects in hospitals and care homes as well as worked as lead artist for dance and project manager on the ‘Fuse Arts and Health Programme’ with MusicAlive (2014-16) and Artist in Residence with MusicAlive on the ‘Creative Enquiry Arts and Older People Programme’ / Arts Council Invitation to Collaboration Scheme (2019-21).

Supported by the Arts Council, Cork City and County Councils and Culture Ireland, Helga has created a body of work presented nationally and internationally including dance ensemble performance productions, choreography for theatre and site-specific works with a socially engaged focus.

Helga was Dance Artist in Residence with Uillinn West Cork Arts Centre (2017-18), Dance Cork Firkin Crane (2021-23) and Graffiti Theatre Company (2023-24).

With kind support from the Arts Council, she currently researches native Irish trees and the Ogham Calendar in an embodied, co-creative process with nature.