Junk Ensemble present the World Premiere Of ‘Ritual’ as part of Cork Midsummer Festival

May 17, 2023

Multi-award-winning dance innovators Junk Ensemble, in collaboration with acclaimed visual artists Jesse Jones and Aideen Barry, will present ‘Ritual’ a highly visual live performance as part of Cork Midsummer Festival from 14th-17th June 2023.

Also featuring music artist Planningtorock, composer Irene Buckley and designers Sarah Jane Shiels and Katie Davenport, Junk Ensemble offers an immersive new spectacle for audiences.

Led by dancers and musicians, audiences will move promenade-style through the atmospheric Marina Market warehouse and experience a collision of artists’ responses, interrogations, and radical celebrations of the witch as a symbol of dissidence. Merging visceral movement, striking visuals and live sound, RITUAL is a disturbance, a happening, an unveiling of an experiment unique to Cork Midsummer Festival.

Junk Ensemble has built a reputation as one of Ireland’s leading voices in dance, creating work that sheds light on important human issues relevant to society today. Associate Artists at Project Arts Centre and previous Artists-in-Residence at The Tate, their productions have garnered widespread praise across Ireland and internationally.

Ritual draws on wealth of artistic talent with associations to the city of Cork; Junk Ensemble are former Artists in Residence at Firkin Crane, Cork; their return to the City and Cork Midsummer Festival this year follows their 2019 dance opera ‘A Different Wolf’ which was produced in collaboration with innovative music-theatre company Dumbworld and featured an intergenerational community choir of over 100 from the City and surrounds. Ritual also features Cork composer Irene Buckley; artist Aideen Barry and musician Caitriona Frost both of whom have strong links to the City; and artist Jesse Jones who teaches at CIT Crawford College of Art and Design, and whose artistic practice is based on Sherkin Island.