Imagining Digital | Deeper Duet: Jean Butler and Patrick Lonergan

Deeper Duet:  Jean Butler and Patrick Lonergan

Early Bird price through December 16 – January 15: $15

General Price: $20

ONLINE

Two practitioners meet over a tweet, and a Deeper Duet for Gibney is born!

Patrick Lonergan (Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies at University of Galway) and dancer-choreographer Jean Butler collaborate, for the first time, in a talk on her latest dance theater work What We Hold, which premiered at the Dublin Theatre Festival in October 2022. In their conversation, “100 Zooms We Haven’t Had Time To Have Yet,” Patrick and Jean discuss how to make sense of a work that is still very new but, because of its archival elements, very embedded in the past. The discussion will unpack ideas around memory, the body, tradition, culturally- specific, Irish-ness, the dancing diaspora, and more.

About Jean Butler

Jean Butler is a dance artist whose work bridges the gap between culturally specific dance forms and a contemporary approach to choreography. Steeped in the history of Irish step dance, Butler believes in the continual excavation of her past as a way to inform her present and create works that exemplify and safeguard the contemporary expression of the form. Her latest work, ‘What We Hold,’ premiered at the Dubin Theatre Festival in October 2022. Past works have been supported and presented by The Arts Council (Ireland), The Abbey Theatre (Dublin), Baryshnikov Arts Center, Danspace Project, the Dublin Dance Festival, Irish Arts Center, Jacobs Pillow, The Joyce Theater, The Kennedy Center, Project Arts Centre (Dublin), Seamus Heaney Homeplace (Northern Ireland). Butler was also a recipient of the Gibney DiP Residency. In 2018 Butler founded Our Steps, a not-for-profit organization committed to expanding the way we think about history, practice, and performance of Irish dance. Partnering with the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library, Our Steps inaugural project, initiated the first living Irish dance archive to date. Butler has taught at Princeton University, University College Dublin, University of Notre Dame Global Center, Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick and is an Assistant Adjunct Professor of Irish Studies at Glucksman Ireland House, New York University. Butler choreographed and starred in the original Irish dance productions, Riverdance and Dancing on Dangerous Ground. She is the recipient of many prestigious awards and honors.

Our-steps.com

About Patrick Lonergan

Patrick Lonergan is a Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies at the University of Galway and a member of the Royal Irish Academy. He has published many books about Irish drama and theater, including Theatre and Globalization, The Theatre and Films of Martin McDonagh Theatre and Social Media, and Irish Drama and Theatre Since 1950. At present, he is writing a book about Irish Theatre and the Ecological Crisis.

He is the Chair of the Board of the Galway International Arts Festival. For Methuen Drama, he is co-editor of the ‘Critical Companions’ series, which has published new books on such dramatists as Sarah Ruhl, Annie Baker, Paula Vogel, David Henry Hwang, August Wilson, and on topics including disability theater, the British and American stage musical, and Middle-Eastern American Drama. He has lectured widely on Irish drama internationally, including recently in Florence, Florianopolis (Brazil), Wroclaw, Wurzburg, Seoul, and Tokyo. He was the 2019 Burns Visiting Fellow for Irish Studies at Boston College.

We encourage you to join this digital event in real time to participate in discussion and artist Q&As! However, if you are unable to join us at the time of the event, the full recording will be made available to all attendees 48 hours after the live event. Patrons will have access to that recording for 10 days via Gibney’s Vimeo account.

Each Deeper Duet session, curated by Eva Yaa Asantewaa, engages two special guests in lively and provocative conversation about artistic life, artistic practice and the urgent social concerns that drive creative expression.

Photos courtesy of the artists.