Liz Roche has been an integral part of Ireland’s dance community for many years but her choreography has never settled into a groove. Yes, there’s an aesthetic line running through her repertoire but she is a restless artist, continually pushing herself into new places…. her work communicates at a very private level.
MICHAEL SEAVER | BALLET TANZ
An intriguing reflection on space, history and the transitory, uncertain nature of our humdrum existence.
☆☆☆☆
JANE COYLE | THE STAGE UK
mesmeric… A beautifully crafted meditation on connections between individuals.
☆☆☆☆
MICHAEL SEAVER | THE IRISH TIMES
a lithe interplay of vivid recollections.
☆☆☆☆
CHRISTIE SEAVER | THE IRISH TIMES
No one conveys the flow of energy through movement in quite the same way as Liz Roche. Under Roche’s choreographic gaze even the act of breathing can become profoundly moving.
CHRIS O’ROURKE | THE ARTS REVIEW
…you will certainly be stimulated, challenged, and provoked to deeper engagement by what is an undeniably powerful production by a truly remarkable artist.
☆☆☆☆
CHRIS O’ROURKE | THE ARTS REVIEW
[Roche’s] choreography is sharp and expressive, thrashing us with the narrative and revealing the savage beauty at its heart”…… “the fierce and feisty spoken words of Galway poet Elaine Feeney; a fire-cracker delivery of vicious text that has emerged from the so many dark, heart breaking and sickening examples of women subjugated through their bodies.
MIKE SMITH | ARTS SCENE WALES
Just as O’Doherty played with permanence and impermanence in both title and paintings, choreographer Liz Roche and co-collaborator composer Linda Buckley have created an impressive work that celebrates the immediacy of the present, but leaves etchings of ghostly afterimages and sounds.
☆☆☆☆
MICHEAL SEAVER | THE IRISH TIMES
…it’s a work of undeniable power, one that is always thought provoking and… crafts moments of sublime beauty.
☆☆☆☆
CHRIS O’ROURKE | THE ARTS REVIEW
“12 Minute Dances” arrests your attention from its very first moments and never lets go. Throughout, flashes of colour inform Roche’s beautifully formed and flowing physical images, as six dancers, and a musician, convey moments of power and vulnerability in five pieces as stunning as they are moving.
☆☆☆☆☆
CHRIS O’ROURKE | THE ARTS REVIEW
The choreography is sharp and expressive, thrashing us with the narrative and revealing the savage beauty at its heart.
MIKE SMITH | ASIW
Sometimes frantic, always intense and primeval … Wrongheaded is a tremendous immersion into the experience of shared, bonded womanhood that offers a glimmer of hope and the possibility of genuine political and social change.
☆☆☆☆
ALEX WREN | BUZZ MAGAZINE
Liz Roche uses the Eighth Amendment debate to interrogate broader insidious effects of patriarchy… her artistic touchstone – a commissioned poem by Elaine Feeney – draws physical responses that are immediate as gesture mirrored word. More persuasive are the movement’s overall matching of the tone of desperation and repression.
☆☆☆☆
MICHAEL SEAVER | THE IRISH TIMES
..there’s an urgency, immediacy and power to ‘Wrongheaded’ that catches your breath… Not to be missed.
CHRIS O’ROURKE | THE ARTS REVIEW
This reflective work is a contemporary perspective on generation emigration, a philosophical approach to the question of distance and time. Her intuitive collaboration with the technology that shortens and underlines distance demonstrates how it can also create additional layers of anxieties… and it’s all beautifully rendered.
SEONA MAC RÉAMOINN | THE IRISH TIMES
With wild yet controlled exuberance… “Time Over Distance Over Time “is a thoughtful, intimate and deeply moving exploration of the physical and emotional distance experienced by those living on opposite ends of the planet… moments of pure genius, reminding us of Roche’s unique talent for crafting powerful, resonant performances.
☆☆☆☆
CHRIS O’ROURKE | THE EXAMINER
Bastard Amber is a stunning and beautiful production, worthy of its historic commission and a fitting tribute to one of Ireland’s foremost choreographer.
☆☆☆☆☆
CHRIS O’ROURKE | THE EXAMINER
Yeats may have established the Abbey, but tonight Roche has ownership of the stage.. From the very first moments of the dance, she puts the body at the forefront…. Roche’s choreographic dexterity is at its height.
☆☆☆☆
MICHAEL SEAVER | THE IRISH TIMES
Roche’s spirit quest is a lament for perfection but it might succeed in granting the extended existence yearned in the lines that inspired it. While the ephemerality of performance may not preserve, the memories of the spectator certainly will, and from a haunting and glowing tableau where dancers use their bodies to create still frames of each other, the artist may very well escape into eternity.
CHRIS McCORMACK | BROADWAY.COM
the choreography also reveals layered meanings, providing a quartet of exquisite dancers the chance to investigate what it’s like to feel divided or torn. The dance becomes a gentle exploration of one’s internal landscape, with brief spoken references to Carl Jung, which thread the movement to ideas beyond the stage.
☆☆☆☆
CHRISTIE SEAVER | THE IRISH TIMES
Magical show sparked by two words…..a spectrum of industrial light and human magic
☆☆☆☆
BELFAST TELEGRAPH
In keeping with Liz Roche’s fluid style, the dancers interweave seamlessly: pushing, lifting, climbing and meting their way through the push and pull conflict – opening up new spaces where there appears to be noe.. Verdict: X-quisite.
☆☆☆☆
ALISON MARTIN | IRISH DAILY MAIL
Powerful without ever being frenetic, capturing stillness within movement, Neither Either is a profoundly moving production and one of the most exquisite performances you are likely to see this year.
☆☆☆☆☆
CHRIS O’ROURKE | THE EXAMINER
My mind and heart were moved. I laughed and yet I felt a kind of pang that these great artists, these people were being hindered in their expression, their life. They never lost me in this fifty minutes of confident expression, of dance.
DEIRDRE KINAHAN | VULGO.IE
Fast Portraits is a gem… their dancing is fluid yet weighted. Roche’s choreography is delicately woven but its threads possess an elusive tensile strength. Entrancing.
DONALD HUTERA | THE TIMES
It is impossible not to get sucked into this immersive world, seductive and hypnotic – as intimate and beautiful as the score.
LORNA IRVINE | THE SKINNY
A impressive multi-layered meditation on memory and identity.
THE IRISH TIMES
It was at once elegant, strong and sad, but still offered a meditative sense of hope.
MICHEAL SEAVER | THE IRISH TIMES
Liz Roches’s exquisite “I Can’t Make It Alone”, with her company Rex Levitates, displayed a new richness and maturity in her ever-developing choreographic vocabulary in Project Arts Centre in December…. fine, lyrical choreograpny which was without doubt Roche’s best work to date.
DEIRDRE MOOLRONEY | DANCE EUROPE FEB
With this piece, it seems a new focus and eloquence has emerged in Liz Roche’s choreography…..Roche’s choreographic style carries a certain weight, as though dancers are performing on a planet with stronger gravity and a denser atmosphere… a fine production by Roche and her company.
CHRISTINE MADDEN | THE IRISH TIMES
A perfect ending illustrates how despite jettisoning theatrical frills, Roche maintains complete control of her form.
MICHAEL SEAVER | THE IRISH TIMES
Roche shows a definite affinity with the artistic values of the antique world, a lyricism that hasn’t gone saccharine, that can instead prove quite stark and elemental… but is suffused with a power and energy you feel before you see.
CHRISTINE MADDEN | THE IRISH TIMES
Roche weaves these concepts into her work with a seductiveness and guile that leaves you saying: Hang on. Do that again. Impressively articulate dance.”
MICHAEL SEAVER | THE IRISH TIMES
The result is a work of singular intensity – so much so that it almost feels voyeuristic to watch it.
DANCE EUROPE
Resuscitate was a powerful example of Roche’s talent and ability – not to mention courage in exploring new territory….
CHRISTINE MADDEN | THE IRISH TIMES
Admirably physical, disturbing and absorbing.
SEONA MAC RÉAMOINN | THE SUNDAY TRIBUNE
they are developing an extraordinarily subtle gestural language here…..certainly auspicious.
THE GUARDIAN
Admirably physical, disturbing and absorbing.
SEONA MAC RÉAMOINN | THE SUNDAY TRIBUNE
Liz Roche Company is strategically funded by the Arts Council and supported by Dublin City Council
