Tipperary Dance International Festival's National Dance Platform Ireland events showcase performances by emerging and established Ireland-based artists.

In this event on 13th October, Zoë Ashe-Browne, Isabella Oberländer & Fearghus O Conchuir, Amir Sabra and John Scott are all invited to showcase an extract of a piece, or work in progress of their brand new work.

Within This Party by Amir Sabra is an improvisational dance performance based on the Palestinian traditional dance "Dabkeh" and hip-hop dance. The show attempts to search for a creative way to build and choreograph.

Brave to Quit You by Zoë Ashe-Browne is a short duet specially commissioned by Opera Ballet of Flanders for the International Day of Dance 2023. The soundscape used is by Irish music duo The Cope. The theme of the work is the break down of a long term partnership and how much bravery it takes to leave something that fits but is no longer fulfilling.

Tearmann Aiteach/Queer Sanctuary by Isabella Oberländer & Fearghus O Conchuir is part of an ongoing exploration of queer flourishing and solidarity. It’s a developing choreographic process, in which Isabella and Fearghus practise and perform how to create malleable spaces that support emergent identities, a dance project that has grown out of the aligning of their two separate artistic practices. Their dancing asks what arrangements of support and desire are available between these queer bodies and others as we gather.

Funny and tender and human, ACTIONS (now) by John Scott / Irish Modern Dance Theatre is a physical conversation between two individuals in empty space. Dancers Ryan O’Neill and Kevin Coquelard merge and break apart – a forceful resistance to which is the motivation for the movement. The dance material is a battle through the space using physicality, lifts, falls, text and sound, the dancers alternately throwing their bodies together then fragmenting into threads of raw movement.

The National Dance Platform Ireland 2023 takes place on the 13th and 14th of October, offering encounters where Ireland-based dance artists, programmers, curators and promoters are invited to meet. A way of getting to know each other, and reveal the creative energy that bubbles up in this particularly forward-looking country, which is so central to the European Union despite its very peripheral geographical location.