Since its inaugural year as part of Limerick National City of Culture in 2014, the festival has been sustained by the vibrancy of interest and practice both here in Ireland and internationally.

The 5th edition of Light Moves Festival took place in Limerick from 8-11 November 2018. Discover a snapshot of the programme below.

Opening Reception - FORECASTING is a performance of one actress and her laptop. It is based on a collection of amateur videos taken from the world’s largest video-sharing website: YouTube. The screen becomes the site of intersection between the performer and the two-dimensional world of images that represent other people in other places. The result is a dizzying hybrid experience, the nature of videos ranging between funny and banal, to ingenious and poetic, to gruesome and violent.

Man with a Movie Camera: Live Music and Film Performane - As a silent film, Man With a Movie Camera has become an enticing challenge to many composers lured by its inherent musicality, rhythm and embrace of abstraction. in 2018, Light Moves presented a new commissioned music score created especially for the festival by two of Ireland’s most innovative musical voices, Dunk Murphy and Neil O’Connor. Both artists, known for their significant body of work that spans experimental music, music for concert audiences as well as music for film, will perform this new commission live.

Feature Film Screenings - Including All These Sleepless Nights directed by Michal Marczak (Poland, 2016) and Dance Goes On directed by Stanley Wong (Hong Kong, 2017).

Open Call Film Screening - 6 programmes of short screendance works selected from the Light Moves 2018 Open Call.

Installation at Dance Limerick: FinnCycling-Soumi-Perkele! Volume 2 - An immersive, interactive installation that dives into the dark side of Finland. It is a combination of politics, dark humour and protest rap in a form of an indoor cycling exercise: one woman’s gritty protest against all-male austerity politics.

2018 Festival Guests and Symposium - Guests include; Guy Cools presenting his workshop Dialoguing those who are Absent, Laura Taler and her talk/performance This is How I’d Like to Die, Simon Ellis with his artist talk Between Faces, Jenny Roche and Dancing a Mediated Body, Annie Pfingst and Helen Poynor with their presentation and interview on Pratices and Processes of Collaboration, and Ruth Gibson and Bruno Martelli (Gibson/Martelli) with a talk on Collaborative Projects.

Open Studio - Transparencies by Siobhan Davies: Over the weekend Siobhan presented 2 events as part of Transparencies, an Open Studio where groups and individuals were invited to observe and participate in the work-in-progress project Transparencies, and an Artist Talk where she will discuss the process of the Open Studio and her work more broadly.

Light Moves Screendance LAB - Altered States, Alternate Landscapes shares artists Gibson/Martelli’s research and process in works such as Falling Upwards and MAN A VR. Presenting a kinaesthetic awareness through self-exploration and active engagement in Motion Capture & Virtual Realities channelling the teaching and philosophy of Skinner Releasing Dance Technique. During the week of the festival, Katrina McPherson led a BA lab for dance students at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance.

The passion with which our audiences and artists have embraced the avenues of possibility for dance and movement enabled by the screen and new technologies is enlivening. From the cinema to the gallery, from mobile devices to interactive contexts, screendance today seems ever more vital as a means to communicate choreographic thinking. This year’s festival continues in its celebration of these possibilities, featuring works filled with the vibrant energy of youth whilst also foregrounding the unique way in which screendance may approach themes of loss and mortality.

Venues

Dance Limerick
Limerick City Gallery of Art
Irish Chamber Orchestra, University of Limerick
Belltable
Limerick Printmakers

Light Moves is funded by The Arts Council of Ireland and Limerick City and County Council. Festival partners include Dance Limerick, Dance Ireland, Digital Media and Arts Research Centre, CSIS, and The Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick, Limerick City Gallery of Art, and TUS Limerick School of Art and Design.