What Next 2026 - Programme 3

Proses on neither here nor there (20 min)

Choreographed and Performed by Mufutau Yusuf

This work contemplates the fragility of human life and the quiet strength found in its impermanence. By using the body and the language of dance, it offers a meditative space to engage with notions of mortality with reflection and curiosity. It embraces themes of decay, transformation and renewal, inviting people to consider death not as an end, but as a vital part of existence, as a cycle within the force of nature. Set against the backdrop of global unrest and personal reflection, the work is a meditation on how we live, what we leave behind and the legacy we shape.

Commissioned by CoisCéim Dance Theatre as part of BENCH, a collection of short original dance works curated by David Bolger, highlighting everyday spaces as creative places https://www.coisceim.com/productions/bench-5-mufutau-yusuf/

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Shell (20 min)

Performed and Created by Matt Szczerek and Simone O’Toole

Shell is a 20-minute duet about navigating male and female relationships. In work, love life and in society. It is a performance about the difficulties and expectations they have to face, about roles to fulfil and pressure to withstand. A story about power struggles and the search for balance. Will you make me feel full or leave me a shell of a person? 

Developed with support from the Arts Council, Dance Ireland and Backstage Theatre Longford.

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heartquake

Choreographed by Ekin Tunçeli

heartquake is a choreographic work about living on shaky ground, both metaphorically and literally. Inspired by Turkey’s political and geographical realities, the piece focuses on the idea that “the land shapes the inhabitants’ way of thinking” and evolves from a local ground into a global reflection on how we inhabit instability and precarity. 

How can you imagine a future while shakes constantly change what you dreamed of? In a land where people grow up hearing ancient cities have been destroyed by earthquakes, how can you build something when you know it’ll eventually be demolished? When everything keeps falling apart, what is left other than each other’s support and the endless effort of human beings?  

Corinth, the birthplace of Sisyphus, is one of the most seismically active regions in Europe, symbolizing the never-ending struggle between hope and destruction.

Ekin Tunçeli is an Aerowaves Twenty25 artist. Aerowaves is a platform funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union