oppression, patriarchy and the enforcement of western religion. A history that informs me to this day. It is in this background that I learned to perform the Swan Lake and Sleep- ing Beauty ballets before I had the chance to learn my own traditional dances and cultural songs, never mind immerse myself in our customs and language. Psychiatrist and political philosopher Frantz Fanon put it elo- quently, “To speak a language, is to take on a world, a culture.” 7 This is a fracture that I am presently toiling to make up for with the same fragile fer-
about the scathing hand of oppres- sion, division and colonization. As a queer body, the work invited me to also consider our shared trauma, inherited shame and conflict- ing relationship with our spirituality. These factors cracked open a window for me to understand with my mind, what my body sensed straight from the beginning. But when I did even- tually meet up with Fearghus for our first and only walk-through of the piece he was not concerned with the- orizing the piece. He had no fascina- tion with breaking it apart and going
Embodying Fearghus’ Mo Mhórchor Féin first in a quiet rehearsal room in Cork–a vibrant town in southwest Ireland whose name I have always found amusing, and later in front of an audience in Dublin left me bare open, transformed. In it, I felt my own pain, struggles and a lot of stuff too intricate to articulate through words. The rigidity of the piece, and the soul’s instinct to push against that force, immediately connected itself to a familial old struggle and my life’s cur- rent pull towards freedom, purity and truth. The silences and still moments in the piece beaconed the spirits within me to whisper in my ears, and gently acknowledge all that I was feeling and experiencing in that moment, without judgment or denial. At the end of the piece, I found myself seeking a corner to weep. To release. To shake it off. Overcome with emotions. Immersed in a trance, a passageway, a channel of sorts. Cracked open. A feeling of linking to a pathway of healing. A remem- bering of a deeply seeded truth that is often forgotten: We are all human, everything else is a construct. “Ah… transcendence”. FEARGHUS Ó CONCHÚIR is a choreographer and dance artist. He makes film and live perfor- mances that create frameworks for audiences and artists to build communities together. His multi-platform work, The Casement Project , was one of the Arts Council’s National Projects for Ireland 2016. He’s co-leading a dance programme with Micro Rainbow International as part of The Casement Project to support LGBT refugees and asylum seekers. From 2018-2020, he was Artis- tic Director of National Dance Company Wales. He was appointed to the Arts Council of Ireland in 2018 and became Deputy Chair in 2019. He is Chair of the UK Dance Network. PAUL MODJADJI is a multi-disciplinary artist and community organizer from South Africa. He uses dance, theater and filmmaking as a form of both art and activism. He is the founder of production house Imvula Pula and the Chair of non-for-profit organization Leaders Who Dare To Dream Foun- dation. Modjadji is a current Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health with the Global Brain Health Institute, at Trinity College, University of Dublin, in Ireland.
AS TWO BODIES IN A SPACE, AND NOT TWO BRAINS ATTEMPTING TO PHILOSOPHIZE THE EXPERIENCE OF TRAUMA, WE WERE ABLE TO INSTANTLY FIND MUTUAL POINTS OF CONNECTION AND RECOGNIZE OUR SHARED HUMANITY.
vor and stern commitment I showed the ballet barre all those years as a young dancer. Accepting the call to receive Fear- ghus’ transformative work Mo Mhór- chor Féin – A Prayer was a moment of deep internal clash and turmoil. An opportunity that sparked a com- mitment to dedicate my work mov- ing forward to righting what has been diminished, rebuffed, and erased, whilst relearning what was inherit- ably mine. Experiencing Fearghus’ work, firstly online, I was immediately struck by the intent of the artist to go only where very few have been brave enough to go. Historically, the church is an unchallenged institu- tion. Understanding the delicate his- tory of Ireland and the many years of fighting for its independence and soul, I instantly felt a sense of con- nection and perhaps even empathy for a people who knew something 7 Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon: published in 1986 by Pluto Press. Originally published in France as Peau Noire, Masques Blanc Copyright © 1952
into its hidden nuances and artistic subtexts. He welcomed me to a space where we would speak through our bodies. And in so doing, revealed right before me a piece of work that speaks beyond he and I as individ- uals, but calls us to a conversation about us as a collective. A collision of all that is yesterday, today and the future. As two bodies in a space, and not two brains attempting to philos- ophize the experience of trauma, we were able to instantly find mutual points of connection and recognize our shared humanity. Yet, we may have our differences, and that’s okay too. This moment, this piece, is an invitation to look deeper and gaze beyond traditions and norms. For me, in its purest form, the piece challenged the struc- tural pedagogies of our religions at the same time as it challenged me to think about what it means to con- form, and about how I define moral- ity, spirituality, sexuality, bodies, power, binaries, oppression, control and essentially freedom.
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In Dance | May 2014 | dancersgroup.org
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