Ballinasloe Official Town Website - All the latest news from Ballinasloe, Co. Galway
  • Home
  • About
    • How to get to Ballinasloe
    • Contact
    • History of the Fair
    • Walks and Trails
  • A to Z
  • Shops
  • Sports
    • Sports Hub
  • News
  • What's On

BALLINASLOE

News

Ballinasloe Native Michelle Mc Cullagh to premier Solo Dance performance at Galway Theatre Festival this week

2/5/2018

0 Comments

 
BALLINASLOE NATIVE Michelle Cahill presents her first solo dance theatre work, Thirteen Steps To The Attic, at next week’s Galway Theatre Festival, a work inspired by her discovery of a box of letters, hidden away for more than 20 years.
Thirteen Steps To The Attic draws from Michelle’s experience of leaving home at 15 to study dance at the Dorothy Stevens School of Ballet, West Yorkshire. The show is a beautiful, multi-layered montage of movement and text set to a live sound-score and recorded tracks from the band Thieves Of Silence.
Currently based in Dublin, Michelle is an accomplished performer and producer. She was then awarded an Arts Council bursary and a scholarship to study Dance-Theatre at the prestigious Trinity LABAN Conservatoire, London. Her performance work over the past 15 years spans theatre, dance, and film and includes the multi award-winning dance film The Area. As a producer she has worked multi award-winning physical theatre company Junk Ensemble; produced TURF by the Rowan Tolley Company for Galway Theatre Festival 2016; and since 2012 has worked as programme coordinator, at the Shawbrook dance centre in Longford.
With such a long and impressive CV already to her credit, why did it take her until now to do her first solo work? "I had wanted to make a solo piece for a while and this year circumstances finally allowed me to make it,” she replies. “I’m a mother and the performing side of making my own work was put on hold for some time but this felt like the right time to make the piece.
“In 2016 I returned to Hipperholme, just outside Halifax, where I’d attended the Dorothy Stevens ballet school. I hadn’t been there for 15 years so when I went back it evoked a lot of memories and I met a lot of people I had trained with. I discovered this box of letters I had kept from my time when I lived in Yorkshire, which was from the age 15 to 17. Between the trip back there and reading through the letters brought up a lot of memories of that time and all of those things; the letter writing, the living there, the training, fed into Thirteen Steps In The Attic.”
'The title refers to an actual place with 13 steps leading to the attic. In the design you see the attic and the action takes place there'How did she cope with leaving home at such a young age? “It was initially for one transition year,” Michelle explains. “I found I did really well in that environment of daily immersive training, so it was very exciting to get the opportunity to do what I loved. I missed home obviously. I discovered things about myself in that time away and that informs the show also.”
Thirteen Steps To The Attic is directed by Rowan Tolley, widely regarded as one of Britain’s most brilliant and imaginative mimes. “Rowan and I know each other from Yorkshire, where he is still based," she says. "We worked together previously on his show TURF. He is a very experienced solo performer so that was the attraction to work with him in creating this work, and to have him alongside me in that process. I also wanted to bring a theatrical element into my dance practice. I’ve been working in different forms of dance for so long, mostly socially engaged community dance, and group performances that were largely contemporary dance based. I was determined to bring in theatre and text so that’s why I chose Rowan. Also there is a familiarity of working with him because of where I trained and lived in that time and he would know people I refer to in the work. So it had to be him.”
The other collaborators are Yorkshire-based band Thieves of Silence. “They are people I know and they have recorded a couple of tracks especially for the show,” Michelle relates. “The music is percussive, sometimes a bit jazzy and there is a bit of unscripted interplay toward the end where it’s live and improvised.”
How did Thirteen Steps To The Attic come by its title? “The title refers to a real place, there is an actual place with 13 steps leading to the attic,” Michelle reveals. “It features heavily in the piece and we use the attic space to anchor the work. So in the design you see the attic and the action takes place there.”
Thirteen Steps To The Attic runs at Nun’s Island Theatre from Friday May 4 to Monday 7 at 7pm. Tickets are €14/12 ​
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    BACK

    RSS Feed

    CLICK HERE to read the Latest Ballinasloe News Articles

    If you have you any news - 
    email us!
    ​

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015

The Town Team was set up by BACD Ltd. to revive the fortunes of Ballinasloe and its hinterland. With the main focus to build on the town’s many strengths, change existing negative perceptions and bring about measurable improvements in the town centre economy and its wider social value.
Contact Us
Service Directory
Homepage
Links
How to get to Ballinasloe
Privacy Statement
Sitemap
Latest Ballinasloe Death Notices
Picture
Ballinasloe Area Community Development Ltd.
Ballinasloe Enterprise Centre 
Creagh
Ballinasloe
Co. Galway

Email
All generic photos and images have been sourced and are free of copyright or are clip art images free of copyright.  Photos of Ballinasloe have been donated by BEC.  If you have any photos that you would like included on the website please email us
Copyright © All rights reserved, 2022 BACD 
  • Home
  • About
    • How to get to Ballinasloe
    • Contact
    • History of the Fair
    • Walks and Trails
  • A to Z
  • Shops
  • Sports
    • Sports Hub
  • News
  • What's On