merry.go.round

Flora Fauna Project 
Friday 4 November, 8:00pm
Tickets €15/12
Booking online via Eventbrite only here: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/merrygoround-uillinn-dance-season-2022-tickets-415887890877
Age suitablility 8+

A mesmerising, emotionally stirring show. A stylised, visually poetic experience. Highly skilled dancers. Intimate in its setting - the dancers performing in the space with the audience seated around them.

Merry.Go.Round is both dance and theater, movement and poetry. The soundscore is a mix of Swedish jazz, opera, pop and NASA’s sound recordings of our solar system. Performed by an international cast of five excellent dancers, it is a show full of improvisation and presence, different each time, and hard to put into words. Press has described it as “a cinematic car crash” (Marie Palmqvist, Länstidningen 2017), and as “pure emotion”. (Seona Mac Reamoinn,The Irish Times 2017)

Between 2012 - 2017 choreographer Maria Nilsson Waller made three pieces all around the theme of our last unclaimed territories - Terra Nullius. The first, Last Land was an imaginary journey to Antarctica and Bir Tawil desert, followed by Founder - a deep dive to our unknown and elusive deep sea floor. Merry.Go.Round is the last piece in the series and is looking out into space and the unknown future of mankind.

In different ways, all three pieces highlight our shifting relationship to nature and environment, and are taking a closer look at the unknown - the borderland where science gives way to myth.

Merry.Go.Round weaves this together while also taking a closer look at the romantic myth - the many stories and ideas about love, romance and relationships that have dominated the western world since early medieval days. It is a piece about our shared longing for home and authentic connections. Through loops and orbits, in a dance that is as much cosmic and celestial as it is human and recognizable, the five dancers tumble around each other in a world that often seems to suffer from post-romantic stress disorder. While the work contains an obvious reference to the movements of celestial bodies, our understanding of the universe, gravity and even time itself, the main concern is questions of a more humane character: What happens when you join another person’s orbit? How can you stay together when your paths are splitting apart?

PERFORMANCE CREDITS
Choreography, Sound, Light, Set & Costume Design: Maria Nilsson Waller
Dancers: Elin Hedin (SWE), Mikel Aristegui (ESP), Marcia Liu (CHN), Kevin Coquelard (FRA), Sara Ezzell (USA).
Dramaturg: Stace Gill

MORE ABOUT FLORA FAUNA PROJECT
Flora Fauna Project was founded in 2017 by Swedish dance artist, choreographer, teacher and designer Maria Nilsson Waller and Irish multidisciplinary artist Stace Gill/The Sei. It is an ongoing artistic collaboration and production house rooted in Dance and Music, making work for stage, film, installation, communities, people and places. With work described as “pure emotion” and “a force of nature” they repeatedly draw our attention to the relationship between man and the environment, to our relationship with the wild, our own bodies and natural intelligence, examining the borders between the known and unknown, science versus faith and mythology. Flora Fauna Project is currently dance artists in residence in D-Light Studios, Dublin. This performance of Merry.Go.Round was supported by the Swedish Arts Council, and is part of a sustainable touring route connecting Sweden and Ireland via land, bringing dance to rural communities and alternative venues.

PRESS QUOTES
“Striking images, pure emotion” **** The Irish Times, 2017
“It’s a joy” Exeunt magazine, 2017
"Deep-felt; heartfelt, exquisitely tender" ****THE ARTS REVIEW, 2017
“My heart is absolutely engaged” Steve McCarthy, DDF BLOG, 2017
”Astronomy for poets and lovers/Astronomi för poeter och älskande” LANSTIDNINGEN, 2017
”Like a cinematic car crash/ påminner om en filmisk bilkrock” OSTERSUNDSPOSTEN, 2017
"Grand and cinematic, like an intro to an unknown universe/stor och filmisk, som ett intro till en okänd värld." Östersundsposten, 2017

https://www.florafaunaproject.com
Instagram, Twitter: @florafaunaproject
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/florafaunaprjct

Supported by Swedish Arts Council, The Irish Arts Council and Konstnärsnämnden.

You can view and download the programme pdf here.

The Contemporary Dance Programme at Uillinn is in partnership with Cork County Council and supported by the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon.