Em-BOG-iment - film by Ailbhe Wheatly & Tony Whelan
Em-BOG-iment is a collaboration between artist Ailbhe Wheatley and Tony Whelan of Canola Pictures.
Em-BOG-iment is a poetry performance filmed on-site in the wilds of East Clare, Ireland. It documents a personal and collective remembering through playful interaction with the Irish landscape. It is a story of what it means to sink, drop and descend in a society that often seeks to escape.
Bowland Beth - film by Vidda Le Feber & Catherine Seymour
Bowland Beth, a film by Vidda Le Feber & Catherine Seymour
Ten years ago the extraordinary bird of prey, the Hen Harrier, was virtually extinct in England due to illegal persecution. It is still under the same threat today.
The inspiration for our film is the searing, tender poem, Bowland Beth, by David Harsent, his elegy to a Hen Harrier, Beth, birthed on the wild moors of the Forest of Bowland, Lancashire and shot
before she could breed. His own reading forms the heart of the film, embedded in Rob Godman’s specially composed and haunting soundscore.
Featuring dancer Zoe Arshamian amid the landscape of Bowland itself, our film bears witness to
the sky dancing beauty of Hen Harriers in flight and the mindless cruelty of their unwarranted
persecution.
Filleadh - Return, film by Zoë Uí Fhaoláin Green
Filleadh - Return by Zoë Green
This film explores the world through the eyes of lichen, and questions what we as humans can learn from them, their deeply slow growth habits and their state of ultra-symbiosis.
Liguid Spine: Augusta - film by Katie Pustizzi
The dance film, Liquid Spine, Augusta, highlights the environmental and health challenges of the region known as "The Black Triangle" in Sicily due to seaside industry.
Nothing Exists Until it Moves - film by Sophie Hutchinson & Billy Kemp
Nothing Exists Until It Moves is short film which uses a computer-vision technique called
frame differencing to extract and emphasise all movement within a moving image. A body
encounters an unseen environment, revealed only through its disturbance. The earth shifts,
stones scatter, and bushes tremble toward consciousness, unveiling the subtle violence of
existence.
The screen becomes a space where movement alone defines existence, blurring the line
between body and environment. A movement study in transformation, presence, and the
unseen forces that shape what we perceive.
Sand - film by Bernadette Divilly
Film - Sand
An exploration of perception of place - a visual poem and dance that emerged in collaboration with lens based artist Cormac Coyne that was composed as an expression of researching ‘Language, landscape, and the body’ on the gaeltacht island of Inis Oírr as part of a Bursary Award.
Created by Bernadette Divilly
Music - Sharon Murphy
Videographer - Cormac Coyne
Supported by an Arts Council Dance Bursary 2022, Galway Dance, Áras Éanna Arts Centre Inis Oírr, Galway City and County Councils
Biographies of the Performance / Dance Artists
Ailbhe Wheatley is a writer and visual artist from County Clare. Her work explores themes of embodiment and interrelationship through poetry, performance and painting. More about her work can be found at www.albalanna.com.
Katie Pustizzi, MFA (she/her) is an Interdisciplinary Movement Artist in the greater Boston area. She is the Director of Liquid Spine, a global dance series that explores the needs of our water systems through the lens of ecology and conservation. Katie is deeply interested in international exchange as a form of artistic research and connection. Her research, teaching, and performance has taken her across the globe. Most recently, she created the dance film "Liquid Spine, Augusta" in Sicily. She also curates the work of international screendance artists through Liquid Spine's FOR THIS EARTH - Screendance Festival. Katie is currently on faculty at Dean College, Endicott College, and Boston University, where she teaches contemporary and improvisational movement forms
Zoë Green is a visual artist with a collaborative and socially engaged practice; using natural materials, found objects, performance, film and sound recording to connect with place.
She co-designs and facilitates creative environmental projects to encourage nature connection, empathy, and playful curiosity in both children and adults.
Sophie Hutchinson and Billy Kemp are a collaborative duo from the West of Ireland. Drawing on their
backgrounds in contemporary dance, sonic, visual and digital art. Their practice explores the dynamic
interplay of these disciplines, delving into themes of nature, connection, elemental forces, and the sensory
experience of place. Through their audio-visual creations, they invite audiences to engage with the
landscapes and ideas that inspire their work.
Sophie Hutchinson is a dance artist and movement practitioner from Waterford, now based in the west
of Ireland. Her work spans performance, film, and site-specific practices. She collaborates with musicians,
filmmakers, poets, and visual artists to create interdisciplinary projects that explore rhythm, dissonance, and the integration of movement with sound and visual media.
This year, she is developing a new project with Surface Area Dance Theatre (UK) in collaboration with Deaf visual artist and writer Louise Stern, in partnership with Dance Limerick. The project is supported by an Arts Council of Ireland Bursary Award. The landscapes of the Burren, in County Clare, where Sophie was based for the past three years, have deeply influenced her creative practice
Catherine Seymour is a Devon based choreographer and writer. This most recent collaboration
with film maker Vidda Le Feber, Bowland Beth, explores the threat to the endangered bird of prey,
the Hen Harrier. It was exhibited as a Screendance installation at Harbour House Gallery,
Kingsbridge, Devon, Feb-March 2024. Further screenings include, Hen Harrier Action’s, Skydancer
Day, May 2024, Exeter Dance International Film Festival, Oct 2024. Fisheye Film Festival, High
Wycombe, Nature & Culture Poetry and Film Festival, Copenhagen, and Birmingham International
Art Film Festival, 2023. Their first film, We Who Stood Upon This Place, was shown in Watch This Space, Dartington, Devon Mar 2019. After training at London Contemporary Dance School and the Merce Cunningham studio, she
performed with Plesni Teater Ljubljana and Nightshift Dance Theatre. Early live dance and dance
theatre works were presented within seasons at The Place Theatre, London and UK touring.
Choreographic residencies include The Royal Festival Hall, London, Dance Base, Edinburgh and,
with the Kreutzer String Quartet, at Chelsea Royal Hospital and Lauderdale House. She has been
a visiting lecturer at Middlesex University and on the faculty at the Scottish School of
Contemporary Dance.
As a poet (Catherine Edwards) she is published as a finalist in the current LISP (London
Independent Story Prize) Flash Fiction and Poetry Anthology 2024 and is performing with Wild
Words, Nature Poetry Project Plymouth, May 2025.
Bernadette Divilly is a dance movement artist using socially-engaged practices centred on the body-mind relationship, practising in the West of Ireland. She advocates, along with a growing number of international practitioners, for the intelligence of the body as central to politics, governance and working with conflict.
Dance movement is central to Bernadette's understanding of what it means to be at home – to be human on a shared planet where sentient bodies are connected and resonate within a physical world. Body, mind and spirit are experienced through the template of the physical body. Movement is a shared language for all life, a language of creation.
Her practice is based on depth psychology and somatic studies. She uses contemplative dance and collaborative arts practices to bridge and connect the private and public realms and to creatively develop new understandings of landscape, culture, migration, health and the body