A disabled-led company, Croí Glan aims to highlight the value of diverse bodies in creating innovative and engaging performances. Hayley Fox-Roberts shares a glimpse into Change, a powerful performance that explores climate resilience and reflects the personal experiences of activists.

Last year, Croí Glan Integrated Dance Company presented extracts from I Dream of Water and Change as part of Uillinn Dance Season. The full-length performance of Change is set to premiere at Dance Cork in Firkin Crane on March 14 and 15. Later this year, the full performance will tour Dublin and Galway.

The double bill at Uillinn offered a new understanding of climate change, exploring climate resilience through movement and reflecting the personal experiences of activists from around the globe. The audience response to the performances was emotional and uplifting.

In I Dream of Water, director and choreographer Tara Brandel paired with Bobbi Byrne in an intimate, personal exploration of gender, climate change and dis/ability; a gambol through the elements and the psyche. Fluid and grounded, the changing identities of the dancers unfold them, unite them and revel in this journey into the heart of being.

 

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Change was developed as part of Croí Glan’s Dance Company in Residence at Uillinn Arts Centre in 2024, choreographed by Tara in collaboration with the dancers. In the extract, the dancers are Yves Lorrhan (Brazil), Oran Leong (Ireland/Malaysia), Rachel Paul (France) and Tara herself, while the March premiere will see the full six-piece ensemble on stage.

Provoking and powerful, the dancers’ diverse bodies and diverse languages convey the strength of unity through this global expression. The dancers themselves are activists, the measure and step of their dance expressing this passion, the belief that the future could, indeed, be beautiful. Change offers a new way of seeing the world, lifting up into a new realm of movement and consciousness: we change our perceptions as we learn to change the world. Queer becomes a way of viewing the world; queer becomes the diversity through which we effect change.

 

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Inspired by Rebecca Solnit’s Not Too Late, the messages of resilience are potent and positive. ‘Hope is a practice,’ says one dancer and we are inspired to hope by the resilience Change so impressively demonstrates. “Is it easier to picture the end of the world than it is the end of capitalism?” asks another, shaking our presumptions as the company shakes us with its rolling, twisting, collaborative joy.

Deirdre Dwyer’s set and costume design is simple but striking, transforming the ordinary into the strange; the one to the universal, its minimalism providing space and vitality for the transformation underway. Composer Benji Bower’s soundscape enhances, supports and celebrates this new way of seeing, this new way of moving. Change is indeed change in action: a collaboration with the dancers, including research with dancers from around the world and with scientists from the Environmental Research Institute at UCC.

 

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Programme notes offered climate action suggestions – one positive action you can take is to see Change and become part of a wider understanding of the impact and human capacity for change, in climate crisis and in bodily autonomy.

Croí Glan is Ireland’s leading Integrated Dance Company, a disabled-led company creating performance with diverse bodies to produce bold, engaging and provocative productions for national and international touring and participatory work. For more information see www.croiglan.com.