In the three years that Lucia has been Associate Dance Artist at Liz Roche Company she has developed a series of new work across different platforms. She has been honing her approach and developing her multi layered practice encompassing improvisation, text, and interdisciplinary performance.
Photo by Luca Truffarelli
Lucia is a Dublin-based dance artist performing and collaborating internationally since 2011. Trained in The Netherlands, she has worked with companies and artists which include TRASH, Company Philip Connaughton, junk ensemble, Liz Roche Company, Maria Nilsson Waller and Oonagh Kearney.
Lucia frequently performs at festivals in Dublin, Cork and Belfast and has toured throughout the UK, Sweden and The Netherlands. She has trained intensively with David Zambrano in Flying Low & Passing Through techniques, developing her interest in group dynamics within composition and teaching environments. In recent years Lucia has received awards from the Arts Council of Ireland, Dance Ireland, Firkin Crane Cork and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre.
In 2020, Lucia was recipient of a Next Generation Award and in recent years has received awards from the Arts Council of Ireland, Dance Ireland, Firkin Crane Cork and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre.
Middle End Beginning (2021) explores a shifting perspective on dance practice and co-management of space. Attempting to let go of ingrained patterning, the work looks to make space for play, for the other and for finding ways to enrich an experience collectively. It embraces the idea of powerful softness, in movement and in collaboration. This is a solo dance performance that is in a real-time conversation with collaborating sound artist, writer and lighting designer.
In 2020 Liz Roche Company was awarded an Arts Council Dance Commissions Award to support the development and premiere of Middle End Beginning which took place during the Modes of Capture Symposium 2021 at the Irish World Academy, University of Limerick.
The piece was performed by Lucia Kickham, Jools Gilson, Craig Cox and Matt Burke.
Middle End Beginning photos by Steve O'Connor 2021
A second output from this commission is the film Soft Focus created by Lucia and filmmaker Luca Truffarelli.
In 2020, over a period of three months of lockdown, Lucia contributed to Liz Roche Company's Still Moving Blog. The three blog contributions which encompassed text and film were And Now, Where Calm Once Lived and The Curve. Read more here
✩ ✩ ✩ ✩ Throughout, Kickham cleverly crafts the journey towards performance into a performance itself. Slowly, gradually, the fractured, disparate elements evolve into something with synergy and cohesion.Chris O’Rourke, The Arts Review
Also in 2019 Lucia presented a work in progress duet This is Me, Trying to Communicate at Dance Limerick for the Modes of Capture Symposium, on June 22nd, 7.30pm at Dance Limerick. This is Me, Trying to Communicate looks at the concept of Lingua Franca, a language that is adopted and used systematically to make communication possible between people who do not share a native language. It explores the communicative power of the dancing body as one such language. The performers play with the buoyant space between the abstract and the concrete; linking movement to spoken language, decoding and physicalising aural utterances, translating vocal dynamics into dynamic movement conversations.
This is me, trying to communicate.
This is me, talking to you in a language that you do not speak yet understand.
This is me, taking borrowed words and making them my own. This is me, threading the edges of conversation.
This is me, tasting the space between us. This is me, tuning in,
Tuning in to you.
Developed with the support of a Dance Limerick Percolate Residency
Performed by Lucia Kickham and Ailish Maher
Liz Roche Company is strategically funded by the Arts Council and supported by Dublin City Council
