OONA DOHERTY – SPECKY CLARK - A SERIES OF THEATRICAL IMAGES Dance

In 2022, Oona Doherty opened the Summer Festivals with Navy Blue, a vivid, high-intensity dance work on contemporary crises that continues to tour worldwide. Two Summer Festivals before, she exposed male fragility through movement in her highly acclaimed solo Hope Hunt. In her new piece Specky Clark, the choreographer turns to her great-great-grandfather’s story: orphaned at ten, he was sent to live with two eccentric aunts in Belfast and forced to work in a slaughterhouse. Doherty weaves this tale of loss and hardship into a world of Irish mythology, with references from Francis Bacon’s distorted figures to the dance film Billy Elliot. With music by Irish drone-folk band Lankum, Sardinian cantu tenore singing, and narration by legendary actor Stephen Rea, she guides her protagonist through surreal, slapstick-tinged scenes. This “artistic milestone” (Der Standard) culminates in a cathartic dance with the ancestors — shaped by both, Doherty’s fearless blend of vulnerability and fury, and by her openness to a variety of forms. This is further highlighted during the festival through Doherty’s installation at the Vorhalle (p.64) and performances across the six Kunstmeile Hamburg venues.