Dublin Dance Festival 2026 - Ciseach: An Embodied Manifesto

Ciseach, by Catherine Young Dance. Image Patricio Cassinoni

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Ritual, incantation, native wisdom. Every culture has its collective memories. Which, as comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell illustrated, share much in common. Myth and memory spawning a worldwide industry of genuine insight, questionable beliefs and gullible New Age escapism. Cosplay Druids worshipping crystal chakras at Bealtaine festivals appropriating the primitive. Or there’s the John Moriartys. Keepers of wisdom, native and other, who strike ley lines into the soul. For whom culture evolves from an intercultural fusion arising out of a myriad of multi-cultural encounters. Something Catherine Young Dance’s revival of 2024’s Ciseach:An Embodied Manifesto aspires to. Pretentiously dubbed ‘an embodied manifesto’, Ciseach (a shambles, mess; also a wattled walkway laid over a bog or soft ground) filters its themes through a rose tinted lens. In which Native American meets Afro Celt with a touch of Balearic rave. A 21st century Ghost Dance that, like its 19th century, Native American predecessor, aspires to reconnect us with the earth. The result sure to have broad appeal for spiritual tourists and the converted. For everyone else, Ciseach might point towards something, but it's sensed rather than conjured. Even so, it offers a stunning marriage of music and movement gorgeously realised.

Ciseach, by Catherine Young Dance. Image Patricio Cassinoni

Beginning in a Clannad Celtic darkness, a brooding, Irish dirge keens six dancers (Vanessa Guevara, Diarmuid Armstrong Mayock, Valentin Lemaitre, Emily Nicolaou, Simone O’Toole, Carmen Palacios Sáenz, swing: Rocio Dominguez) to the stage. Sabine Dargent’s sparse set compressing musicians into each wing to accommodate a series of poles resembling withered braches or forlorn, emaciated saplings. Clannad giving way to loved up beats as the six spin and weave like fairy folk in The Random. Full bodied, High School Musical smiles in rave induced exultation. Dissolving in and out of duets, or occasional solos, before reforming into a tribal whole. Hard, pulsing rhythms electrifying a whirling dervish. Tracks shifting into softer territory open a superb sequence with interweaving poles. Music by Martin Schärer, Jess Kavanagh, Mícheál O’Dubhghaill, Fionn O’Neill, Jon Sanders (2026 tour: Seanan Brennan) reaffirming Young’s passion for collaborative engagements. At times hardcore, at others haunting, music and movement channel trad, house and Native American chants and incantations. Best realised during an explosive Ghost Dance fuelling a relentless, durational, trance like intensity. Bodies collectively circling as soloist spiral in and out before spinning back into harmony. After which the long fade begins. A soft, Irish trad routine giving way to a slow, meditative passage culminating in poles being carried like a coffin, or tied together suggesting strength in unity. A beautiful slice of dance theatre sees poles form a pathway, or a bridge, on which ghosts walk between worlds. Banba’s encounter with Black Elk resolving into fade to black chillout.

Ciseach, by Catherine Young Dance. Image Patricio Cassinoni

Tracing archetypes like stereotypes, if Ciseach speaks of reconnecting to the earth, it’s to a tamed, gentrified, national park earth with no real wildness or danger.  Ciseach less a primal experience so much as a civilised meditation on primal experience. Yet, at times  Ciseach connects to something deeper. Its marriage of music and movement soothing your soul if not always stirring it. Ciseach leaning into romance, but looking and sounding good doing it.

Ciseach: An Embodied Manifesto by Catherine Young Dance, presented by Dublin Dance Festival 2026, Pavilion Theatre and Backstage Theatre, ran at The Pavilion on May 7th as part of Dublin Dance Festival 2026.

Ciseach will conclude its current tour in Glór on May 9th.

For more information visit Dublin Dance Festival 2026