PILGRIMAGE | lizrochecompany

PILGRIMAGE Liz Roche Company

In response to One Here Now: the Brian O’Doherty / Patrick Ireland Project, Pilgrimage is an immersive and intimate contemporary dance and live music installation by Liz Roche in collaboration with Cork composer Linda Buckley. Pilgrimage brings together a cast of exceptional performers in dance and music to decode, embody and re-physicalise the themes of identity, place and language running through O’Doherty Ireland’s work at Sirius Arts Centre. What is created is a one-off special event, full of emotion, searching and possibility.

Photos Clare Keogh

Presented to a capacity audience at Sirius Arts Centre on June 24 as part of Cork Midsummer Festival; the Irish Times wrote

"Just as O’Doherty played with permanence and impermanence in both title and paintings, choreographer Liz Roche and co-collaborator composer Linda Buckley have created an impressive work that celebrates the immediacy of the present, but leaves etchings of ghostly afterimages and sounds.

One of the most striking images was of the three dancers facing the sea with arms exuberantly outstretched, slowly tensing and falling until they were shaking their gnarled hands in front of them. It seemed to sum up the hope-to-despair experience of many immigrants that left from Cobh. A final climactic dance trio surrounded by the murals was powerfully sustained by Buckley’s music with movement sequences and gestures that disappeared and reappeared until a final breathless collapse."

Dancers: Sarah Cerneaux , Kevin Coquelard, Henry Montes. Singers: Robbie Blake, Suzanne Savage, Vivienne Hassell.

Cellist: Ilse de Ziah. Costume Designer: Joe Vanek