SpringMoves
Dance Festival 2025
Celebrate the 7th year of SpringMoves with a dynamic programme of dance performances across Wexford Town!
26 APR
2-3.30pm @ Wexford Town Library
Dance Talks – Intersection
A creative conversation
A dynamic panel discussion featuring creative voices. In Partnership with Creatives of Wexford.
Proud Ngwenya – Creative Producer
Alanna O’Kelly – Visual Artist
Elizabeth Drwal – Theatre & Opera Producer
Orla Bates – Visual Artist
10
MAY
11am-1pm @ Blackbird Cultur Lab
Around the Table
Tickets: €10
Book by email on springmovesdancefestival@
Three dance artists share their practice, lunch provided.
Lucia Kickham – dance artist
Katherine O’Malley – dance artist
Liz Roche – choreographer, Luail artistic director
16
MAY
10.30am-5pm @ National Opera House
Where Dance Meets Street
A day long dance & character work masterclass with No Sleep Dance Theatre.
7:30pm @ National Opera House
CHORA
Luail (Ireland’s National Dance Company)
Tickets: €15 – €35 + Facility Fee to Chora
Luail’s Company of Dancers and the Irish Chamber Orchestra, live on stage together, performing an evening of three original dance works by Irish and International choreographers.
“Don’t Miss It!”
17TH MAY – FESTIVAL DAY
11:30am – 1:00pm @ Wexford Arts Centre
Dance in this Space
Solos by Lucia Kickham & Maria Nilsson Waller;
Short Films screening by Rosemary Lee.
(Moving Worlds Trailer here)
12-3.30pm @ Bullring, Wexford
Dancing with Strangers: From Palestine to Ireland
Instant Dissidence
Dance with the stranger and complete the connection.
1.30pm @ Wexford Arts Centre
Her-acre
Julie Lockett, outdoor (solo)
A solo exploring global themes through the microcosm of one woman.
2pm and 3.30pm starting @ Bullring, Wexford
Eldritch (walkabout street show)
No Sleep Dance Theatre
Forest creatures take over Wexford with wild, high-energy dance theatre.
“Catch them if you can!”
3:45pm @ Premier Chipper, Wexford
Praying Positions Metamorphosis
Maria Nilsson Waller (solo)
An intimate solo dance in a much loved Wexford chipper.
4:30pm @ Sky and the Ground
The Session – Mark Redmond (pipes),
Grace Cuny & Sarah Ryan (dance)
Two dancers & a piper, Irish rhythms & melodies echo around the pub.
Artist lineup
Festival Headline
Luail (Ireland’s National Dance Company)
Luail is a new dance company emerging into an unsettled world. We are working to establish a live set of guiding principles which will develop with the company.
Our core values are to be fearless and inventive, attuned to what matters most to our artists, and joyful in our endeavours with audiences, artists, and company culture. These values guide us in celebrating our diverse society, through dance, within a space of freedom from all forms of oppression, and with a fundamental and steadfast intolerance of apartheid.
No Sleep Dance Theatre
No Sleep Dance Theatre was formed in 2019 by Dylan Davies and Jules Young during their time at Hereford Sixth Form College (HSFC). In the subsequent years, they have combined common interests within dance and theatre to create high-energy narrative dance work. They aim to excite and entice audiences of all kinds, using their extensive knowledge of contemporary dance, theatre, acrobatics and aerial circus to create unique outdoor and immersive works.
Instant Dissidence
Instant Dissidence is a socially and ecologically engaged dance company based in Cloughjordan Ecovillage, directed by Rita Marcalo: the company foregrounds the role of dance as a social engine. The company’s work resists the idea of art as an object produced by a special kind of person called the ‘artist’, and work is often co-created in dialogue with (and performed by) non-professional artists about issues which matter to them: the people whom Rita assembles for each Instant Dissidence project become ‘artivists’, enacting the power of connecting art and social consciousness.
Image: Tatiana dos Santos and Johnathan Batista performing Dancing With Strangers_ From Palestine To Ireland. Image by Cian Copeland for Culture Night Dublin 2024
Maria Nilsson Waller
A choreographer, dancer and designer. She has been working with dance for over 20 years and created 14 independent productions. She is a sought after teacher, and often collaborates with film and theatre makers in Ireland and abroad. In addition to this she has hosted over 200 workshops to school classes in primary and secondary school, as well as created 4 large scale community-dance projects.
Lucia Kickham
A contemporary dance artist from and living in Enniscorthy. She is a dance performer, maker, teacher and rehearsal director. Trained in the Netherlands Lucia has worked with companies and artists including Liz Roche Company, Company Philip Connaughton, Junk Ensemble, Maria Nilsson Waller, Laura Murphy, TRASH(NL), Oonagh Kearney and Lore Films.
Rosemary Lee
An award winning choreographer and filmmaker – has been making dance works in a variety of places for four decades. These include site specific dances in settings ranging from, a disused tyre factory, a cathedral of trees, a vast windswept beach, to the canopies of mature urban trees. She is known for working with professionals and non-professionals, from children to elders, working with soloists to huge casts. Her films have been made for the BBC, galleries and festivals and her installations have toured to a variety of venues nationally and internationally. She is interested in creating an intimacy with the audience through highlighting the humanity of her performers and their close relationship with the environment. She was awarded an OBE for her contribution to dance in 2023.
Julie Lockett
An independent dance artist and writer based in Cloughjordan Ecovillage. She works interchangeably with the ecovillage land and in the studio as Artist-in-Residence at Instant Dissidence’s Eco Dance Space in the ecovillage when she needs shelter. She has a certificate in Permaculture Design and uses this as a lens to create her work.
Grace Cuny
A dance artist living in Ireland. She began her training in ballet, dancing a season with the Suzanne Farrell Ballet in Washington, D.C. before receiving her B.F.A. in Dance Performance from SMU in Dallas, TX. While in undergrad, Grace first encountered modern and jazz and discovered her loves for improvisation, theatre, and informal spaces. In 2021, Grace moved to Limerick to pursue her M.A. in Contemporary Dance. She has since danced with Liz Roche, Catherine Young, and Justine Doswell. Today, she is excited to incorporate her varied interests into more cross-disciplinary, community-building projects.
Sarah Ryan
Based in Dublin, Sarah Ryan has over 10 years of professional experience as a dance performer with a wide range of choreographers, directors and companies from different artistic backgrounds; these include Philip Connaughton, Irish Modern Dance Theatre, Laura Murphy, Liz Roche, John O’Brien, Jess Rowell, Opera Theatre Company, Áine Stapleton, Jessie Keenan, Mary Wycherley, Cie Willie Dorner, amongst others. She has toured nationally and internationally with these works. She has also assisted in the creation of numerous new works including work for the Abbey Theatre and Cork Opera House. Sarah is passionate about all things dance and revels in creating new perspectives for herself in the variety of work she pursues.
Experience the energy and creativity as Wexford comes alive with dance!
Check out our highlights trailer from SpringMoves 2024!
OUR KIND SPONSORS AND PARTNERS
Funded through Wexford County Councils Arts Office – Small Arts Festival Grant Scheme 2025.
Get In Touch
If you’d like to know more, have any questions, feedback or suggestions, please do get in touch!
springmovesdancefestival@