IRMÃ International Debut
24 April 2019At Chameleon, we’re passionate about nurturing emerging dance artists, in order to enrich the dance ecology in the region and build the dance community in Manchester. Here, we catch up with our Associate Artists, Alice Bonazzi and Sara Marques, about showcasing and developing their choreography IRMÃ, which includes exciting news about popping-up in Manchester and their international debut of the piece.
IRMÃ is about to tour internationally to Portugal, how does it feel to take your work out of the UK?
We can’t describe how proud and excited we are! It’s a great responsibility, but after Resolutions and our performances in Manchester, taking IRMÃ internationally is another achievement ticked off our list this year. We’re very interested to see what different audiences would have to say about it, especially in an outdoor festival like DDD in the beautiful city of Porto. We are looking forward to learning more from this experience and see what amazing opportunities the future will bring us.
What have you learnt from touring IRMÃ to different places and venues in the last few months?
During these past months we realised the huge amount of work that touring a piece requires – inside and outside the studio. Alongside keeping the piece fresh in our bodies and on stage, we had to make time to meet people and create contacts, which will hopefully lead to more opportunities to support us and what we plan to do.
Do you have any plans to develop IRMA further?
Choreographically speaking, we would like to develop the piece a bit further but we feel that time is doing this already. IRMÃ has always been changing. The piece reflects our friendship, which evolves and grows as every relationship. We refresh things or develop them if we feel a need for it each time we perform. It has never been the same so far and we are curious to see how different it will be in a year from now.
What can we expect to see from you guys in the coming months?
Well, on Saturday 27 April you can see us performing IRMÃ in a series of free pop ups in the heart of Manchester, our first outdoor shows in the city where we live. After Portugal, we are working on having more performances nationally, exploring both indoor and outdoor settings.
Also, as Damae.Dance we are looking into developing a new project by the end of this year. Definitely 2019 is looking to be a very promising year!
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See Alice and Sara -Damae.Dance – perform IRMÃ at three free pop-up performances in Manchester City Centre on Sat 27 April. 12:30pm at Manchester Craft Centre. 3pm at St Ann’s Square and 4:30pm at Tony Wilson Place (outside HOME).
Find out more about their Portugal performance on Sat 4 May on the festival web-site here.
Sign up the Damae.Dance mailing list here.