An alternative to polarised thinking
Curated by Theo Dorgan & Bridget Webster
Running in parallel with PALIMPSEST, SPARKING DEBATE is a ground breaking CoisCéim Broadreach initiative for and by over 100 young people to provoke dialogue around Irish identity, hospitality and sovereignty through the question “who do we want to be”.
Co-curated with esteemed poet and writer, Theo Dorgan, SPARKING DEBATE is artistically rooted in five poems from the island’s canon. It is presented in partnership with St Patrick’s Festival and features two high profile events – a pageant for the 2024 St Patrick’s Day parade and a series of physical debates at the Grangegorman Campus of TU Dublin on the final day of the festival.
Highly visual, the Broadreach Parade Pageant will feature bespoke costumes and accessories that capture participants’ creative responses to these texts and both events will also include specially designed art banners with extracts from the selected poems.
SPARKING DEBATE is presented in partnership with St Patrick’s Festival, and delivered by CoisCéim Broadreach.
ST PATRICK’S PARADE PAGEANT
WHEN | 17 March 2024, from 12 noon
WHERE | Dublin City Parade Route – click for map HERE
CREDITS
THE PARTICIPANTS
CECILIAN THEATRE ARTS, Castleknock
THE POLISH SATURDAY SCHOOL, Finglas
SEDA COLLEGE, Smithfield
SPHERE 17 Regional Youth Service, strengthening an ongoing collaboration with Creative Places Darndale
PROJECT LEADERS Choreographers Olwyn Lyons & Aoife McAtamney
COSTUME DESIGN Ciara Fleming
TEXTILE ARTIST Pamela Heaney
BANNER DESIGN Alphabet Soup
HAIR & MAKEUP SPF team led by Emma Lennon
ASSISTANT COSTUME DESIGNER Sarah Higgins
COSTUME ASSISTANT Simon Christopher
BANNER ASSISTANT Nicola Burke
DANCE CAPTAINS Mia DiChiaro, Saoirse Lambkin O’Kane, Nick Nikolaou & Sophie Roche
SOUND TAPE Alexis Nealon
STAGE MANAGER Stevie Darcy
TRANSPORT James Rowley
PROJECT CO-ORDINATOR Caoimhe Coburn Gray
PHYSICAL DEBATES
WHEN | 18 March 2024 | 2:30pm – 4:30pm (doors 2:00pm)
WHERE | Black Box, TU Dublin, Grangegorman Campus
TICKETS | FREE admission, capacity is limited on a first come, first served basis
The SPARKING DEBATE physical debates mark the final event of our major multifaceted ART:2023 project for the culmination programme for the Decade of Centenaries in collaboration with the 2024 St Patrick’s Festival.
With these physical debates, the goal is to take this concept one step further – by staging a discussion where diverse perspectives are debated with and through the body in one or more dance styles – in an artistic experiment to spark new thinking around conciliation, peace-making and what it means to be Irish today. A debate is defined as a “a competition in which teams of people, discuss a subject [a motion] and the team that is judged to make the best argument wins”.
The structure of the debate is competitive. 8 crews will debate 7 topics through an instant composition. Topics will be chosen by extraction on the day to allow a spontaneous physical discussion driven by the dancers involved. All dance styles are permitted and crews will be judged on skill, dynamism & creative response to debate topic
TOPICS FOR DEBATE
Each topic/motion is linked to the 5 poems from each province of Ireland that underpin SPARKING DEBATE and are designed to be catalysts for conversation not to discriminate. They are
- FIRST PEACE, THEN JUSTICE (Leinster)
- A UNITED IRELAND FOR ALL OF US OR NONE OF US (Connacht)
- BORDERS SHOULD BE DEFINED BY NATURE/BIOREGIONS (Ulster)
- IF YOU WOULD KNOW ME, COME LIVE WITH ME (Munster)
- NORTHERN IRELAND CAN TEACH THE WORLD: PEACE IS POSSIBLE (5th)
The topic of the final debate will be chosen by the crews involved – possible subjects include: To build an Irish identity we all have to want one; Climate care starts at home; The goal of peaceful living is a state of happy unrest; Truth is born from dispute; For peace making it’s about finding pathways that can evolve not solutions;
CREDITS
CREWS
CREW 1 Levi Cos, Leon Halligan, Brandon Lynch, Jamie Smith
CREW 2 Leon Dwyer, Gavin Kelly, Nathan Kelly, Nathan Evans
CREW 3 LA Feeney, Luke Brady, Chris Crook, Alex O’Neill
CREW 4 Lapree Lala, Daniella Ansong, Adeshope Adeneye, Kessiena Unuakpor
CREW 5 Tobi Omoteso, Casey Ronan, Karl Smith, Paul Eazy
CREW 6 Sara Pavic, Roberta Ceginskaite, Tara Marie Angeline Bredemier, Jacob Keogh
CREW 7 Alex Vostokova, Grace Cuny, Jack Fleming, Christian Emmanuel Dirocie
CREW 8 Markas Kozlov, Salah (Popping Mesh), Diarmuid Armstrong Mayock, Helena Palmer
JUDGES include Robyn Byrne, Cian Mulcahy (bboy Cian), Suleman Shode (Sly Boogie), Mateusz Szczerek, Jessie Thompson
DJ Damo
MC Dylan Chapman
LIGHTING DESIGN/ CHIEF LX John Gunning
PROJECTIONS Alphabet Soup
AV TECHNICIAN Archer Bradshaw
TECHNICIAN Alexandra Rosenberger
HOUSE TECH/SOUND Aidah
ARTISTIC ADVISORS Matt Szczerek & Jessie Thompson
SPECIAL THANKS TO Tobi Omoteso & Jessie O’Reilly
PROJECT COORDINATOR Inna Mazurenko
SPARKING DEBATE | ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Theo Dorgan is a poet with ten collections published, the most recent being ONCE WAS A BOY, which has just received the accolade of One City, One Book 2024 in his native Cork. He is also a novelist, documentary screenwriter, translator, essayist and editor. In 2022 he devised the script for ANU’s production of STAGING THE TREATY (now also a film available
from IFI, both directed by Louise Lowe), and he scripted and presented the multi-award-winning Alan Gilsenan documentary AN BUACHAILL GEALGHÁIREACH/THE LAUGHING BOY. Translations of his work have been published in Greek, Italian and French, with a volume in Spanish due in 2024. He is a member of Aosdána.
Olwyn Lyons is a dance artist and community dance facilitator with a Postgraduate and BA Degree in Dance (UK). Her career spans 10 years working across community dance and dance for health delivering, developing, and directing arts projects in a variety of settings.
Currently Olwyn is Dance Artist in Residence at Creative Life MISA based in St. James Hospital working with the Parkinson’s department. Olwyn was Co-Director of Macushla Dance Club 50+, 2018 – 23 (Dublin City Council, Dance Ireland), and was awarded The Arts Council’s Artist in the Community (AIC) Scheme 2023, managed by Create to further develop Macushla. She has facilitated Dance for Parkinson’s with Dance Ireland since 2017 and was awarded Arts Council of Ireland Agility Award 2022 to further develop her practice working with Parkinson’s Disease.
Olwyn was Age & Opportunity Artist in Residence in a Care Setting 2021 in collaboration with Philippa Donnellan, funded by Creative Ireland/Arts Council of Ireland. She has been a guest speaker at various Dementia and Creativity awareness talks including Creative Brainwaves 2023 with Global Brain Health Institute.
She was Movement Director for National Youth Theatre Ireland’s 2023 production of Move Like We Were Born To Move and Absent the Wrong at the Dublin Fringe Festival 2022, written by Carys D. Coburn with Once Off Productions. Olwyn was awarded Offaly County Council Youth Dance Commission 2022 to develop arts opportunities for young people and in 2023 Olwyn was selected as a Creative Associate with the Arts Council of Ireland’s Creative Schools initiative. Currently Olwyn is Child Protection Programme Administrator with the National Youth Council of
Ireland.
Aoife McAtamney is a dancer/choreographer, musician, actor and teacher based in Dublin. She is currently part of CoisCéim’s CHOREOGRAPHYCONNECTS artist-led residency project.
Aoife began a career as a dancer and choreographer producing work locally and internationally and since 2019, she has been touring with Oona Doherty as a vocalist and dancer for the performance ‘Lady Magma’ and dancing with choreographer Emma Martin in ‘Night Dances’. As an actor, Aoife can be seen in Paula Keohos TV documentary ‘The Devils In her’ and also alongside Olwen Fouéré for BBCNI and TG4.
As a choreographer, she has been the recipient of numerous prizes and bursaries from the Arts Council and Culture Ireland and was Irelands first female lgbtq+ Aerowaves artist as part of the cohort of 2014 with her first solo Softer Swells – that subsequently toured internationally including to La Briqueterie in Vitry-sur-Seine and the Instances festival in Chalon-sur-Saône.
Her movement practice evolved to music, songwriting and soundscapes for performances and in early 2020 Aoife graduated with an MA (1st) in songwriting at the University of Limerick. Alongside their work in dance and choreography, Aoife coaches dancers and teaches workshops in vocal movement and cultivates a community arts practice developing investigations of gender, ancestry and nature. From 2020 – 2022 Aoife was the lead movement artist for Dublin City Council Culture Company and participation practice credits with ageing bodies of culture include CoisCéim Dance Theatre’s Broadreach and now with Macushla Dance Group.
