The Moving in Collaboration International Intensive 2025 was a truly formative experience—two intensive weeks of deep creative engagement, shared exploration, and expanded perspectives. With daily tasks and an evolving structure, it created a new situation for the full group of 35 artists to navigate together. This environment pushed into the heart of what collaboration really is: not just a coming together of disciplines, but a conscious act of making space for others while holding onto your own voice. It revealed the complexity and vulnerability involved in true interdisciplinary work—how much negotiation it takes, how often you must recalibrate your expectations, and how much richer the outcome can be when you do.
We were thrilled to work with a dynamic cohort of artists:
Choreographers Fionnuala Doyle Wade, Tyrone Isaac Stuart, Phoebe Jewitt, Easton Nguyễn, and Jack Philp; composers Barry O’Halpin, Jenn Kirby, Jorge Villoslada Durán, and Barbara Ellison.
They were joined by 18 dancers drawn from the Luail Ensemble, Step Up Dance Project, Maiden Voyage Dance, and UL’s MA in Contemporary Dance. Rehearsal Directors Gloria Ros (Luail) and Lucia Kickham (Step Up) provided generous and grounded support, and we were very lucky to have a special workshop with Gloria Ros and Dr. Eoin Callery, Course Director, MA Composition and Creative Music Practice at the Academy also joined by a group of musicians who helped deepen the real-time conversation between sound and movement.
For the Luail Ensemble, it arrived after nearly eight months of intense creation across Chora, Reverb, and Dancehall. This intensive gave us a rare chance to step back, reflect, and reconnect—not only with our own practices, but with a wider network of artists. These reflective moments are hard to come by in the pace of production, and we found real value in taking the time to consider how we work, and what supports meaningful collaboration.
The intensive challenged habitual ways of thinking about process. For many, it stretched the notion of authorship, asked new questions about leadership, and highlighted the value of shared authorship and mutual exchange. There were moments of friction, moments of breakthrough, and moments of quiet recalibration
The atmosphere across the two weeks was one of generosity, intensity, and genuine exchange. There was a sense that this rare opportunity—to co-create across disciplines and explore the messy beauty of creative collision—was just the beginning. There is clearly space for this work to grow and evolve into something even bigger.
We are especially grateful to the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance for hosting us across their exceptional studio and theatre spaces, and to their technical team, whose support was invaluable.
Finally, a heartfelt thanks to our facilitators—Jonathan Burrows, Mel Mercier, and Judith Ring—whose experience, wisdom, and provocation elevated every aspect of the process. Being in that room with them was personally significant—a moment to reflect on Luail’s evolving role in supporting meaningful, artist-led collaboration.
It was a full, rich, and at times overwhelming experience—one we’re still processing. But the connections made, and the questions raised, will continue to resonate long after these two weeks.
Big thanks to everyone who was involved, those who hosted us and looked after us, and also to our Luail Production and Public Engagement teams for their hands on commitment to this whole experience.
Click this link to view the bios of the choreographers, composers, and mentors.