James has a fluid, playful, and very generous movement quality. He is confident and skilled at Contact Improvisation, and several other dance forms including contemporary dance. James is a confident choreographer. He describes his choreographic process as, “…using my imagination to wish something. I see it in my mind and it’s a really big thing to wish for something – it could come true. So I put the wish in my body and I dance that.”

In December 2020 James choreographed and performed a new solo, called Glory Sunset. You can watch it here:

You can watch James performing his Barna Pier Solo here:

In 2015, James was awarded a prestigious Connect Mentoring Grant by Arts and Disability Ireland (ADI) to enable him to explore non-narrative choreographic approaches in his personal dance making practice over a 12 month period. He chose to explore Chance techniques with Rachel Parry, with a view to challenging his ideas about storytelling and the use of emotion in his choreography. James choreographed Loop Head: Dreams of My Life using new ideas and material developed during the Connect Project and has since performed the piece many times: at conferences, as part of Muscailt Arts Festival (NUI Galway), and at Druid Theatre (Galway). Here is a video of an early rehearsal of Loop Head: Dreams of My Life:

James also collaborated on Tasky 1-4 between 2017-2018. He appears in the film Tasky 1-4.

You can read more about how James makes dances on our RESEARCH pages.