Projects & Programmes - LIZ ROCHE COMPANY

NURTURE Projects

We NURTURE raw talent and build professional capacity within Ireland’s dance sector, enabling us to work with the very best of Ireland-based dancers, producers and technicians in developing and producing our work.

Associate Artists Scheme

This programme creates meaningful and beneficial opportunities for Associate Artists to work with Liz Roche Company at the highest artistic level over a three-year period. The scheme allows us to create clear pathways for aspiring dancers and dance-makers to reach their own potential and achieve their goals while enabling us to build much needed professional capacity within Ireland’s dance sector.

Lighting Design for Dance Project

Delivered in partnership with The Lir Academy, Dance Ireland and IWAMD, Lighting Design for Dance Project offers professional and post graduate dance-makers a resourced environment (three months) to develop their skills in lighting design for dance.

Choreography and Composition Workshops

Led by Liz Roche, Professor Mel Mercier and Dr. Eoin Callery, these annual workshops explore the correlation and links between choreography and composition with students from the MA in Composition and Creative Music Practice and MA in Contemporary Dance Performance at IWAMD.

INVESTIGATE

We INVESTIGATE artistic methodologies and practices, assemble knowledge through company research, shared networks, archiving, and examine deep-rooted societal constructs through universal movement and artistic expression.

IntraSpaces

IntraSpaces is a creative partnership with The Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at University of Limerick (IWAMD) and is an experimental space for collaboration on research, performance and pedagogy. Liz Roche Company is Company- in -Residence at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance and spends up to one month per year developing new work on campus. This partnership model between the university and professional dance organisation supports the development and dissemination of dance knowledges across the Irish and international arts and research landscape. Interdisciplinarity is key, with a view to creating opportunities for shared projects to intersect with a range of Academy faculty, students and courses.

LRC offers open access to students into its working practices supported by the expertise of the company dancers, associated dance artists and creative collaborators in sound, light, set, costume and dramaturgy.

Particular alignments for shared performance projects are envisioned with the MA Contemporary Dance Performance and the new MA Composition and Creative Music Practice.

Modes of Capture Symposium

Forming part of the IntraSpaces programme, this is an innovative artform development project which brings together dance artists, academics and advocates from all over the world in an annual series of talks, workshops and informal performances. Established in 2019 the symposium aims to challenge perceptions among experienced dance practitioners and push the boundaries of what contemporary dance represents for people in a global modern society.

Please see www.modesofcapturesymposium.org

Experiencing Together

Liz Roche Company partners in a newly formed research network headed up by researchers from the University of Limerick, University College Cork, Coventry University and Goldsmiths, London.

This research network funded by the Irish Research Council and UK Arts and Humanities Research Council enables us to investigate the potential seismic shifts in how dance is created and presented as well as providing a platform for innovative thinking and development of possible solutions. This network will help us to utilise new and innovative technologies, stimulate new audiences, and collaborate with artists and international partners to be at the forefront of new thinking for live perfomance both virtually and in live settings.

List of network Participants, guests and organisers.

Ruth Gibson - Coventry University Co-Principal Investigator

Jenny Roche - University of Limerick Co-Principal Investigator

Ben Kyneswood - Coventry University (City of Culture Digital Archive)

Jools Gilson - University College Cork

Marco Gillies - Goldsmiths Computing

Jonathan Freeman - Goldsmiths University i2 Media

Steve Jelley - Dimension

Bruno Martelli - Gibson/Martelli Studio + igloo artists lto

Liz Roche Company

Crash Ensemble - Crash Records

Maitreyi Maheshwari - FACT

Una McCarthy - Limerick City Gallery of Art

stimulate

We engage, inspire and STIMULATE a new generation of dance audiences in Ireland, enabling people from all backgrounds to discover and enjoy our work. Over time, we want to instil in this new generation a profound understanding and appreciation of contemporary dance and to promote a deeper engagement between audiences and the process of dance-making and performance.

Creative Audiences

An annual collaborative initiative, Creative Audiences is an interactive audience development project which gives audiences the opportunity to engage on a deeper level with Liz Roche's work through a free programme of open-access workshops, talks, rehearsals and performances spread out across a three-month period in the lead up to company premieres. Through this project, we aim to build a new generation of dance audiences in Ireland, allowing people to discover and enjoy our work and with a long-term ambition of instilling a profound understanding and appreciation of contemporary dance which demonstrates the highest level of artistic and technical quality.

Tenderfoot

This programme engages early career dancers, enabling them to connect with Liz Roche Company and gain insight and experience of the day-to-day workings of the company. Participants are invited to join from the very beginning of the creative process and are given the opportunity to follow the artistic and logistic development of a production from concept, to rehearsal and performance. Focusing more on early-career artists, the Tenderfoot programme allows us to nurture the development of dancers and dance enthusiasts at the earlycareer stage. This also contributes to the creation of clear pathways to professional development over a number of years.