Welcome to the 16th edition of Tipperary Dance Festival

TDF’25 sticks to one value like a mantra: dance can help us cultivate ways to live together. This starts with seeing differences, embracing them, living with them, and maintaining our ability for curiosity and dialogue. It is our opinion that we fail as a group when people are left out or mis-represented.

Many brilliant artists are currently exploring these questions. We are proud to share the works of Ireland-based and European artists who are standing strong to uphold their human values in challenging times. Like so many today, their lives have been affected by emigration, skin colour, origin, language, or simply for not exactly fitting the mould. What comes through in their work is resilience, liveliness and a deep sense of humanity. Their practice and performances are energetic, welcoming, sometimes funny, always eye-opening. We’re honoured to have them with us.

Junk Ensemble’s Dances like a Bomb explores our relationship to age, staging the mostly invisible ageing body. In Impasse, Mufutau Yusuf explores the representations of black bodies in western society. Monica Muñoz’s piece for children, Rolling! highlights the importance of playfulness, trial and error, as a means to learn and live. Alexandre Iseli’s work Replicas is a collaborative work where liveliness, physicality and dialogue play a more important role than concepts or principles. In Extranjero, Ian Garside explores his perception of being a stranger, his attempts to seek a home in his own body.

We can’t wait to welcome you at the festival, with many opportunities to meet, participate and enjoy the programme together in Thurles, Clonmel and Nenagh.

Alexandre Iseli, Artistic Director