Using her distinctive and visceral choreographic style, award-winning choreographer Oona Doherty creates an unsettling atmosphere for her first work for the big stage, Navy Blue.
A dark night descends and a group of 12 dancers generate a sense of dread, trapped within a destructive algorithm.
Choreographer Oona Doherty uses movement, music and colour to reflect pain and loneliness, and the struggles and exploitation of working class people. Often angry and defiant, Doherty and the dancers ultimately search for a wider communal healing and redemption.
Featuring music from Sergeï Rachmaninoff and Jamie xx, this compelling new piece considers where we have been and where we are heading, as it urgently appeals for societal change.
“How can I develop unison dread on stage? Dance form as a problematic symbol of freedom? Unison as a type of micro communism? Individualism as a disease? Using classical dance form and theatre norms as the playing field of a violent cycle. A destructive algorithm.” – Oona Doherty
”It’s a properly brilliant piece. It feels new. Not overly relying on the past or having an obvious agenda concerning the future. It feels in, and deals with the present. Rare.” – Matthew Paluch / Granmilano
“- - this complex and energizingly philosophical piece is an unmissable world premiere.” – Maryam Philpott / The Reviews Hub
Read the Navy Blue Final Speech by Oona Doherty and Bush Moukarzel in advance.
Bio: Oona Doherty
Oona Doherty’s distinctive choreography has sparked international attention, earning her multiple awards, rave reviews and prestigious artistic opportunities both in Ireland and abroad. She creates intense, compelling works that appeal for societal change.
Doherty’s solo work Hope Hunt and the Ascension into Lazarus (2015) won the Tiger Dublin Fringe Festival Best Performer Award in 2016 and the Total Theatre Dance Award at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2017. Oona Doherty was voted one of the top 10 Irish Artists in 2017 by The Irish Times, and her first group piece Hard To Be Soft – A Belfast Prayer (2017) was voted No. 1 UK dance show of 2019 by The Guardian. She was presented with the Silver Lion at the Venice Biennal in 2021.
Oona Doherty was one of the Aerowaves 2017 selected artists, a Prime Cut Productions REVEAL Artist and The MAC Theatre Belfast HATCH Artist in 2016-17, an Associate Artist at Maison de la Danse de Lyon in 2017-18, an Associate Artist at La Briqueterie Vitry-sur-Seine in 2017-19, and the Dublin Dance Festival Artist in Residence in 2020, 2021 and 2022. She is also one of the Scaling Up artists of Big Pulse Dance Alliance.
Read Oona Doherty's interview in The Guardian.
Choreography: Oona Doherty in collaboration with the dancers
Original Music Score: Jamie xx © by Universal Music Publishing Ltd.
Music production: William Smith
With additional music: Sergei Rahmaninov (Piano Concerto no. 2)
Writer collaborator: Bush Moukarzel
Video conception: Nadir Bouassria
Lighting Design and Technical Director: John Gunning
Costumes conception: Oona Doherty & Lisa Marie Barry
Dancers: Amancio Gonzalez Miñon, Andréa Moufounda, Arno Brys, Kinda Gozo, Hilde Ingeborg Sandvold, Joseph Simon, Mathilde Roussin, Kévin Coquelard, Sati Veyrunes, Thibaut Eiferman, Tomer Pistiner, Zoé Lecorgne, Magdalena Öttl.
Premiere: 10-13 August 2022, Kampnagel International Summerfestival, Hamburg
Navy Blue is a creation of Oona Doherty, produced by OD Works, coproduced by Kampnagel International Summer Festival (DE), Sadler’s Wells (UK), Théâtre National de Chaillot (FR), La Biennale di Venezia (IT), Maison de la Danse (FR), Belfast International Arts Festival (UK), The Shed (USA) and Big Pulse Dance Alliance (coproduced by Dance Umbrella (UK), Dublin Dance Festival (IR), Torinodanza Festival (IT) and Julidans (NL) ) and presented by Tanz im August / HAU Hebbel am Ufer (DE), Zodiak - Side Step Festival (FI), ONE Dance Week (BG), International Dance Festival TANEC PRAHA (CZ), New Baltic Dance (LT), CODA Oslo International Dance Festival (NW), funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation, co-funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union, Supported by Kulturstiftug des Bundes and the support of the Direction régionale des affaires culturelles d’Ile-de-France – Ministère de la culture.
