ARTS Ballina hosts integrated dance performance for Culture Night

Croi Glan dancers performing in ‘This Is’.

Dance celebrates diversity of bodies in Ballina


Croí Glan, one of Ireland’s leading integrated dance companies, will join forces this September with youth from Ridgepool Training Centre, Ballina, and Mayo-based dance academy Danceworld, to create a brand-new dance piece.
At a day long workshop on the September 22, disabled and non-disabled dancers will come together in a participatory form of dance that encourages trust and self-expression. Out of this experience will emerge a work which will be performed as part of the Mayo Culture Night on September 23 in Ballina Arts Centre at 8pm.
Supported by Arts & Disabilty Ireland, this community dance project aims to ‘show out’ the talent, enabling and encouraging people of all abilities to move together. With a grounding in community workshops and performance creation both locally and internationally, Croí Glan aims to challenge ideas and preconceptions and focus on the person rather than their disability. Inclusion is at the heart of Croí Glan’s work and the company firmly believes that dance is a way to explore what a person’s body can do no matter what their starting point. 
The community project piece will form part of a double bill alongside Croí Glan’s critically acclaimed work ‘This Is’, which received rave reviews at the 2010 Dublin Fringe Festival. Choreographed by the award-winning Adam Benjamin, co-founder of CanDoCo, it is a 20-minute piece performed by five dancers exploring the diversity of bodies as they move together, highlighting their own uniqueness and the collaboration that unifies them.
The Mayo performance comes hot on the heels of the international premiere of ‘This Is’ in Barcelona in mid September, supported by Culture Ireland, which formed the pinnacle of a celebratory week of integrated dance at the Sant Andreu Teatre. Both performances at Mayo Culture Night are supported by Arts & Disability Ireland in association with Ballina Arts Centre and Mayo County Council.