Co-founded by Jazmin Chiodi and Alexandre Iseli in 2008, Tipperary Dance is an artist-led non-profit organisation led by Alexandre Iseli, a dance artist and choreographer whose artistic vision has been shaped by over three decades of creative practice across Europe and beyond.
Tipperary Dance’s programmes have been developped to support artists and offer creative dance spaces for our communities. The year culminates with Tipperary Dance International Festival, which usually kicks off in the second week of October.
Initially known as Tipperary Dance Platform, Tipperary Dance encapsulates the prolific range of activities undertaken by Alexandre Iseli and Jazmín Chiodi over the years.
The rebranding in 2022, under the new direction of Alexandre Iseli, enfolded their decades-long experience as artists, managers and curators, while staying true to the core values that drove Tipperary Dance Platform since its inception: care, understanding, integrity, tenacity and generosity of spirit.
As an artist-led, non-profit organisation, Tipperary Dance is an international creative space that engages with artists and citizens while building and providing infrastructure(s) for the art form of dance.
This is made possible thanks to a collaborative approach that involves a network of local, stakeholders and national and international partners including dance companies and organisations, independent artists, public authorities, venues and festivals. And, of course, our audiences, participants, and communities that have made this journey possible, helping us to deliver our highest ambition: artistic excellence and social meaningfulness.
A space to support an art form
In over fifteen years, Jazmin Chiodi and Alexandre Iseli have relentlessly elaborated a space for support and encounter, centred on artists and the relevance of artists’ work. A space in which dance pieces are not an end but a mean: a media between artists, their interrogations, and the public. We have tried to articulate collaborative relationships where artists and Tipperary Dance work hand in hand in a supportive dialogue, to feed the pulse of a vivid community not based on products, but on life experiences, relationships, reflection and creativity.
Tipperary Dance and its international dance festival are led and curated by artists. With a track record spanning three decades performing, producing and touring internationally, they are well-aware of the reality that artists experience day-to-day. More than a providential infrastructure, Tipperary Dance embodies a receptive interface, a supportive environment where live interaction empowers the voice of committed people (artists, partners, communities), helps them reach out and enrich our lives.
Since 2010, Tipperary Dance has hosted many artists in residence, providing not only a studio but also a considerate external eye and feedback on their work. Masterclasses and Laboratories mentored by outstanding artists from all over Europe have fed the dance community with invaluable opportunities to experiment, receive fresh information and build up skills. Bursaries have facilitated the participation of artists in the Tipperary Dance International Festival. Fellowships have provided opportunities for a more sustained practice, symposiums and roundtables have favoured cross-sector encounters with academic partners. International initiatives and exchanges have impulsed the internationalisation of the dance sector in Ireland.
Initially known as Tipperary Dance Platform (TDP), the organisation has been renamed Tipperary Dance and incorporated as a Company Limited by Guarantee in 2022.
An artist-led programme focused on artistic excellence
In late 2008, Jazmin Chiodi and Alexandre Iseli are appointed dance artists in Residence at the Excel Arts Centre in Tipperary, under the auspice of the Centre itself and the Local authority, Tipperary County Council. This sets off a journey towards the development of infrastructures, partnerships and programmes dedicated to injecting a new dimension into the County’s artistic life, and new ideas/possibilities into the professional dance sector.
Tipperary Dance’s international dance festival, founded in 2010, is distinctive in several ways: it is artist-led, curated, and distant from any sizeable city. These facts have inspired a number of strategies: the festival must gather all available partnerships around the County; the festival must rely on creativity to combine resources in a critically under-resourced region and dance sector; Tipperary Dance must build its own regional dance ecology and create momentum to revive an artistic life that will attract both artists and audiences.
Focused on the highest artistic standards, the festival attracts some of the best contemporary dance artists across Europe, the likes of Tânia Carvalho, Lost Dog, Alexandra Waierstall, Pierre Pontvianne, François Veyrunes, Affari Esteri, including artists at the forefront of creation in Ireland, such as Liz Roche, Mufutau Yusuf, Oona Doherty, John Scott.
A comprehensive development programme covering three interconnected areas:
Creating synergies
Continuously supported by the Arts Council and Tipperary County Council Arts Office, Tipperary Dance understands that their ability to generate substantial opportunities depends on the ability to develop links with the outside. Information, resources, visibility and reputation are keys. An intense activity of relation-building and networking follows, generating interaction with companies, artists and organisations, attending many European platform events. The small locality of Tipperary starts to attract recognition from the European dance community. In 2016, the Tipperary Dance programme is acknowledged by the European Dance Network as an example and study case on best practice for relevance in the European dance sector. To date, Tipperary Dance and its curators have raised funds and partnerships with a large number of stakeholders including:
Dance in the community
Everyone has a body, and Tipperary Dance doesn’t see dance as an exclusive specialists trade: in the last decade, more than three thousand children have taken part in Tipperary Dance’s ongoing dance in schools programme, festival workshops or other events. Several groups participated in the creation of pieces and films that were presented in public. The documentary ‘More to Dance’ produced by in 2019 offers a poignant legacy on the profound impact of dance on children’s life, on their desire and ability to take ownership of their decisions, to collaborate peacefully, and on dance’s aptitude to positively shift the perception of adults who mentor them. In another age range, Tipperary Dance’s senior groups Age in Movement, some of them nearly 80 years old, performed in public, and danced in the short film ‘September Days’ produced by Tipperary Dance. On many occasions, the very inclusive All Day Do Dance events gather people of all ages and abilities for a full day of dance.
Supporting dance artists
Since 2010, Tipperary Dance has hosted many artists in residence, providing not only studio space but also a considerate external eye on their work by means of mentoring sessions. Masterclasses and Laboratories mentored by outstanding artists from all over Europe have fed the dance community with invaluable opportunities to experiment, receive fresh information and build up skills. Bursaries have facilitated the participation of artists in the festival. Fellowships have provided opportunities for a more sustained practice, symposiums have favoured cross-sector encounters with academic partners.
A social and civic space
This all-round development perspective drives Tipperary Dance, hand in hand with the professional sector and the public and lead its directors to curate a festival that multiplies forms, places, and opportunities. Tipperary Dance’s festival has been programming international and Irish-based artists, showcasing productions and experimental installations, screendance video sessions, symposiums, masterclass programmes for dancers, community workshops, laboratories, exhibitions, cine-club, and of course performances, in both theatres and non-conventional public spaces.
The festival has shown the work of more than 250 artists over more than fifteen year. An innovatively multi-town and multi-venue programme that illustrates Tipperary Dance’s ability to cultivate high ambitions while staying deeply anchored in the realities of its regions.
By giving equal importance to the Art form and its audience, Tipperary Dance aims to articulate the relationship between the public and a professional community of artists whose work relies on the health of the arts sector. Whether it is live performance or video media, each choice is carefully curated: Tipperary Dance envisions dance as a global space for social discussion rather than a consumable good. A healthy social space interconnects individuals through their aptitude for empathic reflection, and Tipperary Dance’s global vision springs from one source: our sensitive bodies are at the heart of significant reflection.
This positioning lays out an open canvas for questions often ignored, sometimes repressed, and position dance at the heart of numerous conversations that mirror major issues of our time: difference, equality, sensitivity, ability, gender, health, dialogue, to name a few. Tipperary Dance creates time, space and availability to address essential topics that tend to be overlooked. It acknowledges that our nature, made of flesh, is complex, sensitive, filled with contradictions and an endless source for creation and discussion. It embraces a vision for a future where the experience of embodiment and public space are vital in our ability for critical thinking, social interaction and civic behaviour.
In 2019, the Tipperary Dance was nominated for the National Age Friendly Ireland Recognition and Achievement Awards for its project ‘Las Muchas’ involving a group of senior citizens, leading to the creation of the screendance film ‘September Days’.
Tipperary Dance and its festival are centred on the people and proud to embrace the legendary Irish traditions of hospitality that enthuses both audiences and participating artists.
Alexandre Iseli & Jazmin Chiodi, 31/08/2020
Tipperary Dance © 2024
