The Dancer From The Dance Festival of Irish Choreography is taking place in Dublin from the 24th to the 28th of June, 2023.

Curated by Irish choreographic visionary John Scott, and produced by Irish Modern Dance Theatre, DFTD crosses many borders, practices, ethnicities and generations. This 5th edition gathers dance performers from New York, Boston, Lagos, London, Malaysia, Brazil, and all over Ireland.

DFTD will show a vast range of styles from aerial dance to classical ballet, contemporary dance to hip hop and Afro-Brazilian to dance theatre.

Credit: Press

Opening with free performances by Fidget Feet of their stunning A Handful of Dreams, the awe-inspiring and heart-warming outdoor show combines aerial and circus arts with live Irish traditional music and dance. The act is inspired by WB Yeats’ poem, ‘The Stolen Child’ and takes place on June 24th and 25th at DCU’s St Patrick’s Campus, Drumcondra.

Meanwhile, the Project Arts Centre’s live dance gatherings show a range of artists including New York dance legend Seán Curran and Nigerian-Irish multidisciplinary artist Favour Odusola. Justine Doswell’s contemporary Everything is left at six and seven and Deirdre Griffin's acclaimed performance Soup will also feature.

On Wednesday, June 28th, a platform for emerging choreographers and new works will be held, showcasing acts like Alessendra Azevedo’s Terra, Dominican Cristian Dirocie in Breaking and Dublin’s Alex O’Neill’s What If?.

Alessandra Azevedo. Credit: Press

The festival title Dancer From The Dance comes from the last line of WB Yeats' poem 'Among School Children', which ends, "O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer, / Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? / O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, / How can we know the dancer from the dance?".

In this, Yeats recognises that although people are the sum of their separate deeds, life is an amalgamation of actions, a concept which can be extracted from the dance pieces being performed at the festival this June.