Associate Artists

Siamsa Tíre supports artists by offering a range of both long and short-term residency programmes.

Dancer in Residence

Catherine Young is a choreographer, dancer, and advocate for human rights and equality whose work is deeply informed by her training in African dance, yoga and Zen practice. Her work celebrates cultural diversity and the interconnectedness of people which are central to her artistic vision. She has been Kerry County Council’s dancer in residence since 2005 and an associate artist with Siamsa Tire over this period.

Catherine is the creator of The Welcoming Project, a dance initiative fostering integration and social cohesion that began in 2016 at Siamsa and runs her Céilí Afro Dabke Ukraine world dance initiative now all over Ireland.  Her company’s productions A Call to You, Floating on a Dead Sea, State of Exception, Ultima Thule, Woman Stood Regardless, and Welcoming the Stranger—have been presented at Siamsa Tire and her new work Ciseach | An Embodied Manifesto will have it’s Kerry premiere at Siamsa Tire in April 2026.

In November 2026 Catherine and company during their week-long residency at Siamsa worked on their 2023 piece Sumud, for presentation at the Palestinian Movement programme of Light Moves Festival at Dance Limerick.

A Kerry resident, Siamsa Tire has been part of Catherine's journey since her move to Kerry 20 years ago.

Exchange Residencies

We also introduced short-burst exchange residencies in 2022.

Like any dynamic and evolving art form, folk requires encounters with fresh perspectives for new ideas to form and grow. In 2022, Siamsa Tíre’s in-house artistic team collaborated with four other professional artists one-on-one in a burst of week-long research and development, with the aim of drawing inspiration from each other’s practice.

Our Artistic Director Jonathan Kelliher worked with musician and dancer Aoife Ní Bhriain to exchange practice and perspectives on sustaining traditional music and dance. Both are firmly rooted in the traditions yet interested in engaging with new audiences and pushing the boundaries of what the traditional arts are perceived to be.

Training and Development Officer Anne O’Donnell partnered with composer, sound designer, and musician Alma Kelliher. Using voice, they worked together on a folk song using a loop machine to combine Anne’s pure traditional singing with Alma’s sound design expertise.

Catherine Young and Joanne Barry share an interest in authentic rooted rhythm and sound. Their work is informed by folk dance, movement, and song. This development week further enhanced what was an already established creative relationship and gave both artists the space to develop new possibilities and to examine the links between the folk arts and contemporary dance practice.

Musicians Ciarán Mulderrig and Tom Hanafin joined forces to explore the complexity and versatility of the piano versus the simplicity of the tin whistle. The pair stepped outside their own comfort zones as they looked at how traditional Irish music can be interwoven with an eclectic mix of musical genres.

Siamsa Tíre’s folk artists Joanne Barry and Anne O’Donnell collaborated with spoken word artist Ciara Ní É to interrogate the many dialects that have sprung from the deep well of the Irish language and the writing that has emerged under its influence over the centuries. Through Ciara’s play with language and the folk artists’ exploration of song and dance, together, they examined the syntax and rhythm of the Irish and English languages, revitalising the folk arts in an imaginative new way.

These short-burst exchange residences began at the Spring Equinox and culminated in a sharing of ideas around language, performance, and heritage as part of Siamsa Tíre’s Culture Night 2022 celebrations.