LUCIA DANCES
An Immersive Dance Theatre Project
Based on the life story of James Joyce’s daughter Lucia, Light Theatre Company is developing an ambitious Immersive Dance Drama.
Lucia was a hugely talented dancer in 1920’s Paris who had been trained by Isadora Duncan’s brother Raymond in what was known as ‘Rhythmic Dancing’. Lucia was beginning to be celebrated by critics and the press and, for reasons that are not entirely clear, she stopped dancing and spent most of the rest of her life in therapy and institutions. Lucia’s father - the writer James Joyce - arranged consultatiosn with Carl Jung who diagnosed her as schizophrenic.
The research process took us on an investigative journey of increased complexity and led us to new opportunities, resulting in a partnership with Dr Kerem Çubuk at Armagh Planetarium and and real-time manipulation of visual elements within a 360° dome. Having recording voiceovers at SRC Banbridge, more recently the spatial sonic soundscape for the project has been created by Dr. Isaac Gibson and Prof. Pedro Rebelo at the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC), Queens University. This resulted in a 15 minute prototype version of the project with the dance element embedded in the film. This was shown to an invited audience on the Armagh Planetarium Dome last October the feedback was entirely positive and encouraging. Please contact: alistair@lighttheatrecompany.org to view the full prototype - meanwhile here is a short version promo..
At that time we did not have the opportunity to test the concept as a live performance but now by a number of synchronicities we have had to the opportunity to work with Talitha Maslin, a West Australian dancer. In May this year we were given access to the Virtual Production Studio at Ulster University where we mounted a new version before an invited audience. We used the same images from the Planeterium showing, reconfigured for projection on flat LED screens
To date the project has been part funded by the Go Succeed programme and continues to be supported by the DfC and Future Screens NI.
What we now need urgently to advance the project to full performance capability is an injection of substantial funding.
If you think you can assist with this do please contact alistair@lighttheatrecompany.org
If you would like to know more about the Lucia Project please use this form and add a short message. We would love to hear from you.
Lucia Dances at Bloomsday in Szombathaly
Szombathely is a Beautiful small town in Hungary from which Virag - the father of Leopold Bloom, the hero of James Joyce’s Ulysses, is supposed to have come. Every year the town hosts a Bloomsday festival and this year the Mayor of Szombathely invited Csilla and Alistair to join them in celebrating Bloomsday and to explore the possibility of bringing Lucia Dances to a future festival .