Date: June 25, 2026 - June 25, 2026
Location: Ireland

Accesibility

ISL and Audio Description

About the show

A curated evening of new ideas and works-in-progress showings from a group of disabled artists. The programme of performances will include work from the following artists: Niamh McPhillips, Maryam Madani, Lunatraktors, Erin McNamara.

Niamh McPhillips will present Stim–intimacy. The performance is a consent-forward, work-in-progress participatory performance inspired by the work of Aby Watson on stimprovisation, created for neurodivergent performers exploring intimacy and connection in performance. Through repetitive, sensory-led movement and responsive attention, the 20-minute session explores how stimming can become a shared choreographic language rooted in attunement, boundaries, choice, and non-verbal communication. Participants are invited to either take part or simply observe as the practice investigates alternative ways of building intimate scenes through embodied listening and regulation.

Maryam Madani will present a new solo work-in-progress combining wheelchair dance, movement, music and spoken word. Building on themes and creative approaches developed in previous performances for Disrupt Disability Arts Festival and St Patrick‘s Festival, the piece continues an exploration of disability pride, isolation, healing, community and the complexity of multiply-marginalised identity through an intimate and emotionally charged performance style.

Lunatraktorswill present material from their participatory, all-ages, inclusive music theatre show TimeWeavers. Initially funded by Creative Waterford and supported by Waterford Council, the show is currently in development following its debut at SCENE+HEARD earlier this year. TimeWeavers takes audiences on a folk-music journey into the Mists of Time, powered by collective vibes: sound made together with our bodies and voices.

Erin McNamara will perform a section of a dance piece they have been developing over the last 12 months at Dance Limerick. Using floor mats and speakers to help them feel the beat, along with lighting to help them see it, they aim to demonstrate that there is space for deaf dancers in the world of dance.

About the artists

Niamh McPhillips is a neurodivergent movement practitioner, performer, teacher, and intimacy director working across interdisciplinary performance with a consent-led ethos. She holds a BA (Hons) in Drama (Performance) from TU Dublin Conservatoire of Music and Drama and an MA in Movement: Directing and Teaching from Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, and in 2026 completed a Certificate in Intimacy Choreography for Live Performance with the Intimacy Professionals Association. Her practice centres movement, storytelling, and embodied communication, and she currently works as Lead Drama Facilitator at An Grianán Youth Theatre, supporting young people through creative practice.

Maryam Madani is a performing artist, activist, writer and wheelchair dancer. She is a member of Kate Wilson’s Undercurrent Dance Company based in Sligo/Leitrim and the Founder of Disability Power Ireland, a grassroots disabled persons’ organisation for whom she organised Ireland’s first parade and festival for Disability Pride Month in July 2022-2024. She has a BA in English Studies from Trinity College Dublin and an MA in Journalism from TUD. She was a participant in the Europe Beyond Access Labs in 2025 and Kampnagel Centre for Finer Arts’ BIPOC Disabled Artists Lab in Hamburg. She was an awardee of the Irish Writers Centre and Breaking Ground Ireland Foundation Programme 2022. She is a practitioner of Authentic Movement, a therapeutic form of improvised dance which underpins the work of Undercurrent, and emphasises movement which arises spontaneously from internal impulses and emotions, rather than trying to force the body to align with choreography not designed for disabled bodies.

Lunatraktors are choreographer and percussionist Carli Jefferson (she/her), and visually impaired vocalist and researcher Clair Le Couteur (they/them). Beginning from the bare bones of vocal harmony and percussive dance, Lunatraktors rework Anglo-Celtic traditional music from the 1500s to the present. The duo approach folk music as performance art. They are known for their primal, ritualistic sound, expanding into weird, playful spaces with acoustic beats, analogue synth basslines, whistles and bass accordion. Ancient and contemporary, mournful and joyously deranged, Lunatraktors are ‘simply different’ (RTÉ Lyric FM, Ireland).