FIGURING IT OUT 71-72
Mairéad McClean  ​​

Saturday 6th Feb, 5pm

Continuing our exploration of dance on screen in its many forms, we present two works by award-winning filmmaker Mairead McClean. McClean’s work here juxtaposes archive dance footage with personal memory, family history and evocative political underpinnings. Each film uses a distinct rhythm, cleverly creating a subtle atmosphere of building tension.

Between the Jigs and the Reels
2019
2 mins


Between the jigs and the reels is an expression used to describe "that which happens among, despite, or because of great confusion, chaos, or disarray"
(Dictionary; Ireland, Idiomatic)

A couple of years ago, when looking for something else, I stumbled across footage of an Irish dancer on youtube. The footage was of a girl practising in her treble shoes on a wooden floor. The sound of the shoes brought me back to my Irish dancing class in Beragh Hall in May 1972. I was there with my sisters when a family friend interrupted the class to tell us we had to go home. They said that there was a surprise waiting for us. Walking up the village street I remember thinking that the surprise must be a new bike! When I arrived into the kitchen there was Dad, home from Long Kesh Prison. He had been gone 10 months. 

This short film springs from that memory. When making it, I was reminded of the sound of the lambeg drum and how similar these sounds are. When showing this film in a gallery setting it would be projecting directly onto the skin of one such drum.

No More
2013
16 mins


“No More is my interpretation of what resides in memory”  
Two filmed events, which take place at the same time in two different parts of Europe, come  together some 40 years later, in a memory of things past.  
In the first, broadcast on the BBC on the eve of August 8th, 1971, the Prime Minister of  Northern Ireland, Brian Faulkner, announced the introduction of Internment. In 'No More',  this footage is intercut with footage of Ryszard Cieślak, lead actor from the Polish Laboratory Theater Company. Cieślak’s, demonstrates body exercises (derived from Hatha Yoga) designed to allow the practitioner to go beyond ‘their own personal limitations’.  
In combining both performances’, questions are asked about authoritative power and control over freedom of movement and expression. 
 
the political as personal,  

the private as public,  

the dark as light,  

the closing as opening,  

the real as imagined  

the dream is real.  

*No More was the inaugural winner of the MAC International Prize, Belfast in 2014. It is held in the National Collection of Ireland at The Irish Museum of Modern Art and in The Collection of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland

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Tickets £4

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