NIGHT DANCES Comes to Edinburgh Fringe Next Month

The loud, raucous hit of Dublin Theatre Festival 2021 comes to the Edinburgh Fringe. Featuring ten intergenerational dancers and three musicians playing live, Night Dances is a series of dance poems expressing the invisible energetic, connective tissue that joins us.

Created by Irish dance maker Emma Martin with live music by Daniel Fox (of Irish post-punk musicians Gilla Band, formerly Girl Band), the performance has the loud, sweaty and euphoric atmosphere of a live gig and is comprised of four poems:

LOST BOY: A solo for a male dancer. Inspired by the story where Lucifer is God's lover throw down from heaven, with only God's voice echoing "go to hell". The echo was all he had left to sustain him.

GOD IS A GIRL: 5 young girls, bright eyes, blood pumping together, dancing their hearts out. They whip their limbs and ponytails out into world like it's their last breath. The most potent of life stages distilled into powerful physicality, all fury and might and faith. They're the future and they're fearless.

THE RAVER: "When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight... I shall try to fly by those nets" (James Joyce) Floating in music and laser beams.

RED: a trio of women. Triple Goddess, three witches, trinity, 3 furies. Weaving conjuring shapeshifting through the ancient, excessive, iconic, profane. The Statue of Mary cracks open. She smiles. For our mothers, grandmothers and great-mothers.

Creator and choreographer Emma Martin, said of Night Dances: "Night Dances is not about something, it's for something. A Ceremony. What we want to leave behind, what we want to carry towards the future. It's a rowdy collision of dance and live music. No need to understand. Because dance and music are enough and they belong to us all."

Read Emma Martin's notes on the essence of Night Dances here.

Funded by the Arts Council of Ireland | Supported by Culture Ireland. Night Dances is a co-production with Dublin Theatre Festival

Company Information

Creator and Choreographer: Emma Martin

Dancers: Robyn Byrne, Aoife McAtamney, Javier Ferrer Machin, Ryan O'Neill, Jessie Thompson AND five young Edinburgh based dancers, aged 10-14 (from Edinburgh Dance Academy)

Live band: Daniel Fox, Emmett White, Brian Dillon

Designer: Katie Davenport

Lighting Designer: Stephen Dodd

Producer: Pádraig Heneghan

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