Once you complete your degree what happens after that?
I graduated in August 2019 and I was very lucky that I had a Christmas contract before I left University; one of the choreographers asked me to come and work with him, so I did that in Birmingham. After Christmas I returned home to Belfast and then the world shut down because of Covid.
Just before that, I worked with the Northern Ireland’s first-ever Children’s Writing Fellow, Myra Zepf, on my first show as a choreographer, “The Butterfly and the King” (This was a portrayal of Myra Zepf’s book in Irish – An Féileacán agus an Rí). We performed that as part of the Belfast Children’s Festival in 2020 and that took place in Culturlann in West Belfast.
It was a piece which fused Irish dance with Contemporary dance, a dance fusion piece. It worked really well and audiences really enjoyed the show, and that happened in March 2020 and then the Lockdown hit.
Lockdown hit everyone in the arts sector very hard.
What happens then?
Maiden Voyage asked me to do some work with them, and there was a piece called “Turnabout” which was written and performed during Lockdown. It was performed in our own areas, and Jennifer Rooney choreographed that. And that kick-started my presence in the Belfast dance scene, and while it is a small scene, you do need to get noticed in order to get work. I started to work quite a bit after that because working with Maiden Voyage was a good thing to have in your portfolio.
I went to New York for 3 months because I was offered a scholarship to train at the Broadway Dance Centre and after that I went to London and lived and worked there for about a year. I was travelling back and forth from there to Northern Ireland.
I then decided to come back home to live and work in Northern Ireland. For the last four years I have been freelancing here.
How did you find freelancing?
It was definitely a struggle and a lot of hard work. I did make it work because I think that once you are here and people within the dance community know who you are, and they want to work with you, then it is possible to find work. There is a lot of wonderful art being made here and I was often asked to work on very interesting dance projects.
I was teaching as well, so I would often be teaching 3 to 4 days a week. I was also actively making my own work and performing that.
You do have to very pro-active, you have to be teaching, making your own work, working with other companies, and you need to find as many avenues to work in dance as you can.
If you want to follow the work of Clara Kerr see the links below
