Hope Hunt and the Ascension into Lazarus
Oona Doherty
© Mona Blanchet
In 2024, Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels is supporting the presentation of Hope Hunt and the Ascension into Lazarus by Oona Doherty as part of Les Inaccoutumés Festival.
A hunt for hope: a dance performance between physical theater and social commentary. As a politically engaged choreographer, Oona Doherty listens to the voices of those who live without social or cultural privilege. Alone on stage, a child from Belfast dances, embodying the desires of male youth for hope and a future in often provocative attitudes and gestures. With fury and grace, Doherty slips into the sensations of a population of young men whom she met in the streets of their neighborhoods, far from the glamor of pedestrian zones. She captures this energy ticking over and the humanity behind the verbal and gestural rebukes, thrown against the pavement as the dancer throws her body onto the floor. Hope Hunt and the Ascension into Lazarus takes to the concrete to bounce back, caught between gravity and hope.
about the artist
© Luca Truffarelli
Oona Doherty
In 2024, Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels is supporting the presentation of Hope Hunt and the Ascension into Lazarus by Oona Doherty as part of Les Inaccoutumés festival.
Oona Doherty has been performing dance-theatre internationally since 2010 with companies including: TRASH (NL), Abattoir Fermé (BE), Veronika Riz (IT), Emma Martin/ United Fall (ROI), Enda Walsh and Landmark Productions (ROI).
Doherty’s ground-breaking choreography has earned her multiple awards and prestigious opportunities both in Ireland and abroad. Her solo work Hope Hunt and the Ascension into Lazarus (2015) earnt her Tiger Dublin Fringe Festival Best Performer Award in 2016 and won the Total Theatre Dance Award at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2017. Her first group piece Hard to Be Soft - A Belfast Prayer was voted no.1 UK dance show of 2019 by The Guardian. In 2019 she created Lady Magma: The Birth of a Cult and 2021 saw her first collaboration with (LA)HORDE, collective at the helm for Ballet National de Marseille (FR).
Oona Doherty was awarded the Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale Danza in 2021.
