“Irish World Academy Staff and Students featured in Culture Night 2023”

Irish World Academy staff, students, and artists-in-residence were featured on RTÉ 1 as part of Culture Night 2023 and these performances are now available on the RTÉ player.

The centrepiece of RTÉ’s celebration of Culture Night 2023, this was a live hour-long music and arts television programme, broadcast from Dún Lúiche in the heart of the Donegal Gaeltacht.

The programme featured a performance by the Irish World Academy's Dr Breandán de Gallaí and artists-in-residence Fidget Feet Aerial Dance Theatre.

Shot on location in the lazy beds of Oileán Árainn Mhór, Tír Chonaill, Toċomlod is a dance work by Ériu Dance Company, exploring migration and its effects on the Donegal communities as they move between the isolation of the pastoral Northwest and the urban centres of Scotland and the similarities and shifts in the everyday corporeal gestures from working the fields to the production line.

Dr Breandán de Gallaí, Course Director of the Irish World Academy's BA Irish Dance and MA Irish Traditional Dance Performance, is the Artistic Director of Ériu Dance Company, and this piece features tutors, students, and alumni from the Irish World Academy. The soundtrack is an interpretation of Fear a’ Bhàta, a Scots Gaelic song commonly taught in Donegal Gaeltacht schools, arranged by award winning composer Natasa Paulberg and performed by the RTÉ Concert Orchestra.

This was followed by an exciting performance by Irish World Academy artists-in-residence, the award-winning Fidget Feet Aerial Dance Theatre, filmed on the banks of the river Shannon in Robert Byrne Park, Limerick City.

Congratulations to all involved!