Is this the future? What have we done? And where the hell are we going? With music by Rachmaninoff and Jamie xx, the rising star of the dance world presents a worldpremiere, brutal as well as beautiful.

With great impact, Oona Doherty catapulted to the skies of the dance world with her energetic and award winning works about identity, class and gender. At the Summer Festival 2020, she exposed the fragility of male gestures in the virtuosic and highly acclaimed solo HOPE HUNT. NAVY BLUE is Doherty’s first work for the big stage, a dark choreography for twelve dancers cast throughout Europe and original music by Jamie xx. Based on Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2, that reflects his own depression and its overcoming, she translates the classical ideal of crisis and redemption into the present: the unison of the classical ballet is flavored with fear and dragged through an existential dread. Until a re-birth emerges, an attempt of freedom, of salvation, of future is re-stated. Doherty’s work is angry and defiant to the point of physical pain, but always also sensitive and tender, self-aware and in search of meditative healing. Thus, NAVY BLUE, which will be premiered with a multitude of international partners as the festival’s opening, with all its abyss is also an appeal to the beauty of life and for social change.

Oona Doherty

Oona Doherty was born 22.05.1986 London in 1996 she moved to Belfast.

She studied at St Louise’s comprehensive college Falls road Belfast, The London School of Contemporary Dance, University of Ulster and LABAN London. She has a BA Honours and Postgraduate in Contemporary Dance Studies. She has been performing dance-theatre internationally since 2010 with various companies, including: TRASH (NL), Abattoir Fermé (BE), Veronika Riz (IT), Emma Martin/United Fall (ROI), Enda Walsh & Landmark Productions (ROI).

Doherty’s distinctive and visceral choreography has sparked international attention,
earning her multiple awards, rave reviews and prestigious artistic opportunities both in
Ireland and abroad. She creates intense, compelling works that appeal for societal change. She has forged a wide range of artistic relationships locally and internationally. Jamie XX I dont know (2019) The Rubber Bandits (2017-2019). So far she has produced highly acclaimed works. Her solo work Hope Hunt and the Ascension into Lazarus (2015) was Tiger Dublin Fringe Festival Best Performer Award in 2016 and the winner of the Total Theatre Dance Award at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2017. Reconnaissance Grenoble audience 1st place, judges 1st place 2017.

Oona Doherty was selected one of the top 10 Irish Artist in 2017 by the Irish Times. She created her first group piece Hard to be Soft – A Belfast Prayer in 2017, which was then voted no.1 UK dance show of 2019 by the Guardian. She created Lady Magma: The Birth of a Cult in 2019. 2021 will see Oona Doherty’s first collaboration with (La) Horde, collective at the helm for Ballet National de Marseille (FR). She is now working on a new piece for 12 dancers, called NAVY BLUE(working tittle) to be premiered in August 2022.

Oona Doherty was one of the Aerowaves 2017 selected artists, a Prime Cut Productions REVEAL Artist and The MAC Theatre Belfast HATCH Artist in 2016-17, an Associate Artist at Maison de la Danse de Lyon (FR) in 2017-18, an Associate Artist at La Briqueterie Vitry-sur- Seine (FR) in 2017-19. She is Dublin Dance Festival Artist in Residence in 2020- 2022. Oona has been awarded from the Venice Biennale Silver Lion in 2021.

Artistic direction & choreography Oona Doherty

Collaboration music Jamie xx

Collaboration script Bush Moukarzel

Costume design Oona Doherty, Lisa Marie Barry

Lighting design John Gunning

Projection & stage Nadir Bouassria

Production management Gabrielle Veyssiere

Navy Blue is a Big Pulse Dance Alliance co-production, co-produced by Dance Umbrella (UK), Dublin Dance Festival (Ireland), Torinodanza Festival (Italy) and Julidans (The Netherlands), co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.

A co-production of the Kampnagel International Summer Festival, Sadler's Wells (London), La Biennale di Venezia, Théâtre National de Chaillot (Paris), Dance Umbrella Festival (London), Maison de la Danse (Lyon), Belfast International Arts Festival, Dublin Dance Festival, Torino Danza, Julidans Festival (Amsterdam), MC2 (Grenoble) PARTNER Pavillon Noir (Aix en Provence), KLAP (Marseille).

Supported by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and DRAC Ile de France.