Uillinn Dance Season 2026
DATES
6 October to 11 November 2026
TIMES
SHARE
6 October to 11 November 2026
Uillinn Dance Season 2026 offers audiences and artists an opportunity to experience and take part in a vibrant array of live performances, film screenings and discussions in our unique location in Skibbereen, County Cork.
If you're a regular to our dance season, or if you have never been to a dance performance before, we are excited to see you and share in this years provocative programme of dance - no experience necessary, just curiosity! Feel free to ask our staff or check our blogs, podcasts, socials for news and behind the scenes.
Taking place in both and spring and autumn, Uillinn Dance Season is part of West Cork Arts Centre’s growing and ambitious contemporary dance programme supported by the Arts Council. The dance programme presents opportunities for dance research, classes and workshops, professional development, performance and project work with communities both onsite and off.
Portraits in red by Wanjiru Kamuyu I Dance performance and post show discussion I Tuesday 6 October 6:30pm to 7:30pm.
A bold, brave and uncompromising universal narrative that investigates and explores the idea of the dominant standard of beauty. Kamuyu puts in question the image of the body through a sacral and incarnated journey of metamorphic tenacity. TICKETS & MORE...
A DANCE by Magdalena Hylak and Lionel Kasparian | Dance Performance | Friday 23 October at 7:30 pm | 20 mins | Loudness
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. TICKETS & MORE...
Wit & Whimsy: Yin & Collapse by Orla McCarthy | Participatory Dance Performance | Thursday 5 November at 7:30 pm | 70 mins | WARNING: Contains references to mental health. The performance may include a laser machine.
Welcome to Yin Yoga. Breathe out. You are gently encouraged to relax. Please ignore the slow collapse of everything around you. A beld of dance, theatre, live music and optional participation, the performance begins in calm guided stillness before spiralling into awkward humour, collective dance and emotional chaos. A gentle yoga class is a great place to process burnout, capitalism and the end of the world, right? TICKETS & MORE...
Embodied Creativity | Dance and Health Workshop by Helga Deasy | Friday 6 November | 11:30 am to 1:30 pm | 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. TICKETS & MORE...
Silenced (we’re still here) by Tara Brandel | MAIN Dance performance | Friday 6 November at 8:00 pm | 30 minutes
Silenced (We’re still here) weaves spoken word, looped vocals, movement, aerial and a glittery touch of drag to take a disturbing look at the current erasure of trans and queer rights in many parts of the world—utilising a script taken from interviews with LGBTQI+ individuals from multiple countries. TICKETS & MORE...
The Act of Existing by Croí Glan and Philip Connaughton | Dance performance | Saturday 7 November at 8:00 pm | 40 minutes 1 hour | strictly over 18
The Act of Existing is a playful, unsettling and revealing new duet choreographed by Philip Connaughton in collaboration with dancers Bobbi Byrne and Ben Sullivan that explores what it means to be ourselves in relation to others, blurring the boundaries between observation and participation to invite audiences into a live encounter where influence is never straightforward and responsibility is never neutral. TICKETS & MORE...
Knothead by Elaine McCague detached.collab | Work in Progress Sharing | Wednesday 11 November at 7:30 pm | 25 minutes | over 12 | Noise and strobe light
Created and performed by multidisciplinary artist Elaine McCague under detached.collab, Knothead is an ongoing research project exploring the shifting relationship between body and material through a counterweight hair practice, using experimentation with aerial rope, movement, and installation to investigate risk not as spectacle but as a lived, embodied condition. TICKETS & MORE...
Turnstile by Tipperary Dance | Film Screening | 36 minutes | Friday 6 & Saturday 7 November 2026 at 1:15pm and 7:00pm
Two dancers are enclosed inside a glass cabinet. Video projections show oversized bodies falling into an empty space. The factual numbers of a bloody forensic report become the backbone of the music composition. Commissioned by Tipperary Museum of Hidden History, in memory of the 1920 events known as Bloody Sunday. MORE INFO...
MIND[e]SCAPE (2021) and Orla & Sam (2022) | Orla McCarthy | Friday 6 & Saturday 7 November 2026
Free event, film screening at 12:00pm and 2:00pm
Two short dance films by Orla McCarthy will be presented, showcasing work created in 2021–22. These high‑quality films will be screened in a full‑scale gallery setting, offering audiences the chance to experience the choreography on a large screen as it was intended.
MIND(e)SCAPE Running is a meditative form. It brings the subconscious lens into focus. This unconscious economy of (e)motion can focus the mind to find resolve in the agony of reflection, mediate obsessions, or find an ephemeral peace in a kind of vacancy of the immediate.
Orla & Sam is a tribute to the everyday warmth that we feel when we fall in love.MORE INFO...
Once Upon a Time in the West by Esmee O’Brien | PREVIEW Dance performance | Friday 6 November 7:45pm | 10 minutes
From New York City to the wild landscapes of West Cork, Once Upon a Time in the West is a celebration of resilience, nature, and new beginnings. O’Brien expresses her personal experience of family trauma self-discovery, and community. TICKETS & MORE...
