In an exploratory Residency for this year’s Festival, choreographer Stephan Herwig and visual artist Austin McQuinn will deepen their shared interests in manifestations of liveness, immediacy and emergent processes of expression – a conversation which began at Tipperary Dance’s Splash Lab during the summer 2025.

Stephan’s recent choreography focuses on the sensual, the mythic and contemporary challenges of the visual in his powerfully intimate performances.

Austin’s practice in visual and interdisciplinary art is attuned to the body as a conduit for image making and symbolic resonance, its material presences and cultural complexities.

Both artists are drawn to processes of transformation in their search for embodied meaning, finding points of origin with kinesthetic exploration, alongside their experiences of otherness and their own creative histories.

In this merging of their expertise, the Residency enables two distinct voices, from different countries and cultures and rooted in distinct fields, to find open ground in Tipperary, to move and create new ideas together.

This Showing is the outcome of a Tipperary Dance Residency in partnership with Tanztendenz München e.V.

What is it to feel like a stranger in your own skin, in your own land?

Extranjero is a performance that uses dance theatre as a tool to invite us to reflect on our physical, geographical and cultural heritage.

This planet we call Earth sustains us all, but it doesn't allow us all to belong…

Who owns the heritage of a certain place, when the only constant is change? The heritage that surrounds us may have nothing to do with our ancestors, but still we claim it as ours.

Socio-politically, we are in a moment where nationalism is proudly showing its ugly face and enjoying inexplicable but undoubtedly popular support. The position in society of the “other,” the stranger, the foreigner, is in perilous danger.

What does it mean to belong to a place? Who has more or less the right to occupy space, to use resources, to enjoy freedom of movement?

As a perpetual foreigner, I seek a home in my own body. But sometimes our own body is the most treacherous of all. It can be a hostile environment if we fail to make peace with it.

This solo opens a dialogue between the body, the space in which that body resides, and the being that inhabits that body, and asks whether being a stranger can simultaneously make us feel more connected to everything around us.

Extranjero showcase is the outcome of a Tipperary Dance Residency in partnership with Teatro Victoria, Tenerife.