RIAN – a Fabulous Beast Production

Inside a full-size replica of an 1890 Wyoming timber barn in the Main Gallery of VISUAL, acclaimed choreographer Michael Keegan Dolan and musician Liam Ó Maonlaí, with a company of musicians and dancers, will embark on a performance of their beautiful and evocative masterpiece Rian.

In 2005, Liam Ó Maonlaí (Hothouse Flowers) released his solo album Rian, inspired by the extraordinary recording of folk legend Sean O’Riada’s 1969 performance at the Gaiety Theatre.

In 2011, eight dancers from around the world and five of Ireland’s top musicians unite with Ó Maonlaí and Keegan-Dolan to create an expressive cultural hybrid. Ó Maonlaí ambles amongst some of the country’s finest trad musicians coaxing sounds out of various instruments, while the dancers explore the music, twisting and writhing their bodies with influences from faraway places, in “a ritual lifting of the gloom and shame, an opening up of buried energies” as the Irish Times put it.

“One of the most daring and highly original dance theatre companies in the world” The Times

“One of the best choreographers ever to emerge from Ireland” The Guardian

http://fabulousbeast.net/production/video/rian/