Building community through dance has been a constant goal for Tara Brandel. The choreographer lives in Ballydehob, in west Co Cork, and her dances are rooted in the area and have grown around the people who inhabit it. In a more global sense, she believes that communities are the answer to climate change, the fundamental existential problem facing society today.
She is not alone in these views. Many environmental scientists agree. But she is part of a small minority that believes in dance as a way to bring about that change.
“Growing up in west Cork in the 1970s, there was a strong sense of collective responsibility,” she says. “My family had one of the only phones in the area, so the neighbours used it regularly. My father often drove people to the vet or helped in other ways. I always felt that it wasn’t just my parents raising me. It was the whole community.”
She felt a deep connection to that community. “From an early age I saw myself as the village dancer, much like there was a village baker or carpenter.”
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This sense of community naturally extends to her artistic approach. Brandel’s earliest works spurned homogeneity on stage. Rather than presenting similar bodies in perfect synchronicity, she was drawn to difference, underpinned with a strong collectivist ethos.
“When I trained at the Laban centre [in London] I wrote a manifesto about my vision as a choreographer, and it was rooted in representing diverse voices and perspectives.”
This idealism hasn’t been worn down by the realities of professional practice.
“For me it isn’t about ticking diversity boxes. It’s about creating work that truly reflects the world around us. I am always analysing power dynamics in performance. Who holds privilege? How is it expressed? Are the artists aware of it or is it unconsciously embedded in their work? These are the kind of questions that shape my approach to choreography.”
After training at Laban she worked in London, Berlin and San Francisco before returning to Ireland. In San Francisco she collaborated with Axis Dance Company, which focuses on integrated dance.
“Returning home for a visit, I spoke with Ian McDonagh at Cork County Council’s arts office about integrated dance. He encouraged me to write a five-year plan, which ultimately led to the founding of our own integrated dance company.”
Brandel formed Croí Glan with Rhona Coughlan, a dancer with spina bifida. (She is now artistic director of Inclusive Dance Cork, based at Firkin Crane in Cork city.) The company had a repertory model, inviting other choreographers to collaborate and create new dances rather than creating dances in-house.
Some of these visiting choreographers have had experience working with disabled dancers; others needed guidance. Brandel sees it as a two-way exchange: they bring their artistic vision and Croí Glan helps them explore new ways of working inclusively.
“Sometimes it was easier for me to see the movement range of the disabled dancers and where they could go and how far they could go,” she says. “You really have to work with someone for a while before you have a sense of their limits. So we could guide the choreographers to push things further.”
Croí Glan has collaborated with most big Irish choreographers and performed nationwide and abroad. All the while west Cork provided a constant inspiration.
“I’m influenced by this beautiful landscape and the opportunity to be in really remote places,” says Brandel. “The quietness and the ability to focus is fantastic, but there’s also a cultural richness in the area that is unique.”
When she was a child her father wrote for Granada Television; he would fly to Manchester to record current-affairs documentaries. “That gave me a model of living very rurally and working very internationally. I think that’s really true in general here in west Cork. The composer Benji Bower has an amazing CV and was nominated for outstanding achievement in music at the Olivier awards. But I met him on walking a beach.”
Bower is part of the creative team behind Change, Croí Glan’s latest work. It follows on from Unseen, a multidisciplinary work based around unseen but vital parts of our ecosystem.
“What I’ve learned from creating Unseen, and now through Change, is that climate scientists – or just scientists, probably, in general – are hungry to make connections with artists, because we help them to disseminate their ideas.”
She contacted the Environmental Research Institute at University College Cork during the planning stage and asked if it would be interested in being involved.
“During our research week three scientists would come to rehearsals each day. When they arrived I’d ask them to talk individually for 20-30 minutes about the core of their personal passion for environmentalism and climate change.
“There were four dancers and visual artists in the space, and we all reacted to their words, moving and painting as they spoke. Afterward, the speakers would talk with each other while we continued responding through movement and art.
“Gradually, the boundaries between discussion and performance dissolved. Conversations flowed into movement, and movement into conversation. I never instructed anyone to dance, but it happened organically.”
By the end of the week a key realisation emerged: addressing climate change cannot be separated from addressing global inequalities.
“The consensus was clear: tackling climate change requires deep co-operation and community building. The writer Ian Hughes emphasised that social movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter must be part of the same conversation. This isn’t just about climate. It’s about a total paradigm shift.
“At the time I didn’t know exactly what I would take away from the process, but by the end I realised I needed voices from every continent, particularly from the Global South. However, I didn’t want to fly anyone in, so I sought out individuals living in Ireland who represented different global perspectives. That marked the second phase of my research.”
Facts and figures can be overwhelming, but dance operates on a visceral level
— Brandel
Since then Change has evolved into a performance with a cast of five dancers from around the world: Bobbi Byrne (Ireland/Spain), Oran Leong (Ireland/Malaysia), Yves Lorrhan (Brazil), Tanya Turner (Czech Republic/Ireland) and Andrea Williams (Cape Verde).
A community has developed around Change, helping it come to life. Brandel was particularly inspired by Hughes and Karina Buckley, a former dancer who cofounded Climate without Borders. This organisation collects climate stories from around the world in collaboration with other weather reporters.
But however powerful the stories, Brandel and Buckley believe in the power of dance to be an agent of change.
“Dance offers something unique to the climate conversation,” says Brandel. “Facts and figures can be overwhelming, but dance operates on a visceral level, allowing audiences to experience ideas in a way words cannot fully capture.
“When we presented our work at Uillinn Dance Season [in Skibbereen], the climate adaptation scientist Lydia Cumiskey, who had been collaborating with us, attended for the first time. She was so deeply moved by the performance that she was barely able to speak during the postshow discussion. That moment reinforced how dance can communicate the urgency of climate action in ways that traditional discourse cannot.”
Cumiskey, a senior postdoctoral researcher at University College Cork, has become a Climate Pact ambassador and is furthering the idea that the arts must play a role in engaging people with climate action and adaptation.
All of these different inputs could be overwhelming, but the dramaturge Lou Cope is helping Brandel to retain clarity amid the multiple ideas.
“It’s a very complex, multilayered subject matter, and there’s also quite a lot of cultural references in the dance. I refer to Beckett’s Come and Go and to Nijinska’s [ballet] Les Noces. Then there’s a little bit that breaks out into a kind of Busby Berkeley musical number.
“But even if the dance is really complicated, I need to work out exactly what I want to say. And then how to say it. What’s too much and what’s too little? Can it get preachy? Is it too obscure?”
A key influence is Rebecca Solnit’s Not Too Late, a collection of essays by various writers that not only promote community and the arts as ways to address climate change but also, and most importantly, encourages immediate action, however small.
There is never a sense of despair in Brandel’s steadfast vision of how we can address such a monumental challenge. Just a quiet confidence in the transformative power of dance.
Change will be performed at Dance Cork Firkin Crane, Cork, on Friday, March 14th, and Saturday, March 15th
