Ruairí Ó’Donnabháin has been making dances in Ireland since 2008. He is a recent Masters in Choreography Graduate from DAS Graduate School in Amsterdam & holds a joint honors B.A. in Drama & Theatre Studies and English from University College Cork. Ó’Donnabháin is from County Cork, Ireland and his choreographic practice is concerned with ‘aesthetic practices of care’ and queering representations of the dancing body. He is currently living and working on Oileán Chléire, a remote island and Gaeltacht off the south west coast of Co. Cork investigating Gaeilge as a site of queer resistance and new materialist collaboration ‘in the wild’. Ó’Donnabháin has performed for Jennifer Walshe, Mårten Spångberg and THEATREclub among others. His own work has toured internationally across Europe, North America and Asia. He is a core artist with Keith Hennessy and TURBULENCE (a dance about the economy). He recently performed a solo dance for 30,000 people with Arcade Fire and his work ‘aon mhac tíre nó roinnt mic tíre’ was nominated for Spirit of Fringe & Project in 2018 while ZOMBIES; why death is dying or are you working hard enough? received the Judges Choice award at the Tiger Dublin Fringe Festival 2014. He is currently

developing two artistic works: ‘Archipelagic Thinking’ which focuses on expressions of cultural identity across the North Atlantic Arc and ‘Naomhóg’ a piece that takes the building of traditional currachs as the impetus for choreography. Ó’Donnabháin was a Next Stage artist at Dublin Theatre Festival in 2010 and completed a year long residency with Daghdha Dance Company. He was awarded a place on the prestigious DanceWeb scholarship at Impulstanz, Wien. In 2016 he participated in Pan Pan Theatre Company’s International Mentorship and Bursary programme where he worked under the mentorship of Stewart Laing towards realising a large scale public art commission in the context of the Irish 1916 Centenary Celebrations, entitled SOLDIERS. His work is supported by CREATE’s ‘Scéim Ealaíntóir sa bPobal’ in 2018/19.

Image: Ruairí Ó’Donnabháin. Photographer: Robbie Sweeney.