Siamsa Tíre to screen free YouTube World Premiere of Anam
Enjoy the best of traditional music and dance with Siamsa Tíre’s YouTube world premiere screening of the full live performance of Anam this Saturday 2nd May at 7pm. This free screening marks the original opening of the National Folk Theatre’s Festival of Folk season and provides lively traditional entertainment during this time of isolation, as we all safeguard our communities against the COVID-19 pandemic. The screening will be available on demand for one week up to 7pm on Saturday 9th May – just link to https://bit.ly/2YeKw0U for the live performance. If audiences want to support Siamsa Tíre, the National Folk Theatre and its artists they can donate HERE.
Anam (meaning soul in Irish Gaelic) is an exhilarating, upbeat fusion of hard shoe step dancing styles from US, Canada and Ireland woven cleverly together with personality, humour and superb Irish traditional music. Originally co-commissioned by Dublin Dance Festival and the National Folk Theatre of Ireland, Anam premiered in 2016 and subsequently toured throughout Ireland in 2017. It has become part of the summer Festival of Folk season by the National Folk Theatre, which takes place annually at Siamsa Tíre theatre and arts centre from May to September. Due to COVID-19 pandemic this year’s season has been rescheduled to 2021. To bridge the gap for its local and international audiences, and to provide its artists with an outlet to showcase their talents, it is now offering a global audience the opportunity to see one of its five folk theatre productions available at Siamsa Tíre.
This production brings together the skills of four world-class step dancers featuring dancers Matthew Olwell (Appalachian Flat Foot), Jonathan Kelliher (North Kerry “Munnix” and Artistic Director at Siamsa Tíre), Nathan Pilatzke (Ottawa Valley, Canada) and John Fitzgerald, a proponent of the Modern Irish Dance style. Anam incorporates a personal insight into each of the dancers. The infectious party atmosphere is accompanied by live music and song by acclaimed Irish musician and composer Feargal Ó Murchú, Mikey Smith (pipes and tin whistle) and Joseph McNulty (bodhran, fiddle and guitar). Authentic and raw, this percussive dance piece explores the similarities and differences between the dancers, each with their own distinct hard shoe style. Anam attests to the tradition of ‘passing on’; celebrating the dance’s essential spirit, yet injecting it with fresh energy to create something new. Anam was co-directed by Jonathan Kelliher and Australian choreographer Sue-Ellen Chester MacCarthy. Anam was filmed live on-stage in 2016 by Siamsa Tíre.
The online premiere of Anam is Siamsa Tíre’s ground-breaking project to broadcast the best of Irish arts and folk theatre to an international online audience, with the aim of entertaining people during the COVID-19 Pandemic and giving audiences an insight into the Irish arts. This is the first production to be made available online by Siamsa Tíre with plans for further performance projects online in due course.
Siamsa Tíre is home of the National Folk Theatre and one of Ireland’s busiest theatres and arts centres. For over fifty years, the National Folk Theatre has presented Ireland’s premier cultural experience. It now has a cast of over 100 professionally trained traditional Irish performers across the season. Ireland’s best Irish dancers, musicians and folk stage performers present five folk theatre productions of exhilarating, colourful and lively representations of Irish culture and heritage through the best of Irish music, song and dance every year (with 2020 being the only exception to date).
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