James O’Connell

James has a fluid, playful, and expansive movement quality. He is confident and skilled at Contact Improvisation, and several other contemporary dance forms. James is an experienced 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 (at University of 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.