Journal

Though The Casement Project has completed its planned activities, that doesn’t mean that its legacy isn’t alive and growing. It was a pleasure to see Catherine Young’s choreography, Welcoming the Stranger, commissioned by The Casement Project for Féile Fáilte, acknowledged as a model of successful practice in the Arts Council’s Places Matter Conference.

The Casement Project has crossed a lot of borders, so it’s no surprise that it continues beyond 2016 with the broadcast of I’m Roger Casement, a dance film directed by Dearbhla Walsh and produced for The Casement Project by COCO Television. The film will be shown on RTÉ One on 17 January at 23:10. It will also be available on RTÉ Player after that.

In placing The Casement Project in the frame of the ART:2016 and 1418NOW commemoration programmes , I wanted to show how dance helps us understand ourselves, our history and what we might do together in the future.  It was encouraging to have the recognition of the commemoration programmes that a dance project could take a major place among artistic […]

As each of the six lithe performers, four men and two women, quietly declares “I am Roger Casement” we are at the heart of Fearghus O’Conchúir’s choreographic intent: to create a highly physical and visual performance where dance embodies and explores the multiple meanings of that life. This incorporates the symbolic, the gendered and the social aspects, then and now.

I hope audiences recognise the performers on stage as fellow humans exploring their capacities and frailties in ways that remind us of what strange potential is available to all of us.

Butterflies and Bones doesn’t try to tell Casement’s story. I value the liveness and surprising potential of bodies too much to try to tie them to a single narrative. And by making work in this way, I’m asking an audience to get involved, to bring their own perspectives, imagination and perceptions so that we can build something new together.

As we gather in Dublin to get ready for our Butterflies and Bones shows at Ulster Bank Belfast International Arts Festival this week and Project Arts Centre next week, it’s invigorating to look back at the wonderful energy of Féile Fáilte on Banna Strand and to carry it into our performances.

I’m delighted that the Realex Web Awards 2016 have recognised the great job that Karen Hanratty and the team at Pixel Design have done on thecasementproject.ie. It won best microsite in this year’s awards – thanks to its superb design, and to its content too, I’d like to think!

In the second of The Casement Project‘s appearances at Kilkenny Arts Festival, I shared a platform with journalist, Fintan O’Toole (who has written extensively about Casement), Dr. Barbara Dawson (Director of The Hugh Lane where two Casement exhibitions are running) and Prof. Roy Foster (historian and friend of The Casement Project). We were invited to have […]

The Casement Project pays close attention to the historical legacy of Casement’s life and afterlife.  But that attention is in the service of figuring out what we need to be doing now: how we come together, live together, create the conditions where all kinds of people can flourish together.  Una’s powerful eulogy, delivered at A […]