Céilí: Seán Curran Company and Darrah Carr Dance

Darrah Carr holds a PhD in dance from Texas Woman’s University. She received her MFA from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wesleyan University. Named one of the “Top 40 Under 40” by the Irish Echo, one of the “Top 100 Irish Americans of the Year” by Irish America magazine, and one of the “Most Influential Women of 2010" by the Irish Voice, Carr has been active for 25 years in both the Irish and modern dance communities as a choreographer, dancer, educator, and writer. In addition to her work as the artistic director of Darrah Carr Dance, Carr and her Irish step dance partner, Niall O'Leary, have performed their duet act in a variety of locations ranging from Disney World to the Osaka Festival Hall in Japan. They are featured dancers in Absolutely Irish!, a PBS documentary directed by Academy Award-winner Paul Wagner with a cast of traditional Irish musicians led by Dr. Mick Moloney. As a scholar, Carr has presented her research at the Dance Studies Association, the National Dance Education Organization, the World Dance Alliance, Dance Research Forum Ireland, the Popular Culture Association, and New York University's Percussive Dance Symposium. She has contributed articles to Dance magazine, Dance Studio Life, Dancer, and the Dance Insider, and a chapter to Close to the Floor: Irish Dance from the Boreen to Broadway. Carr is an assistant professor in the Conservatory of Dance at Purchase College. 

Photo courtesy of the artist

Seán Curran’s career in the arts spans 35 years, beginning with traditional Irish step dancing as a child in Boston. A sought-after choreographer and director for opera and theatre, Curran’s notable projects include Salome (Opera Theatre of St. Louis, San Francisco Opera, Opera Montreal, San Diego Opera); Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night's Dream for The Shakespeare Theater; Fire Shut Up in My Bones, Shalimar the Clown, Ariadne on Naxos, Nixon in China, and Daughter of the Regiment at Opera Theater of St. Louis; NYC Opera productions of L'Etoile, Alcina, Turandot, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Capriccio, and Acis and Galatea; Shakespeare in the Park's As You Like It; the Metropolitan Opera’s Romeo and Juliette; and on Broadway in James Joyce's The Dead, Cymbeline, and The Rivals at Lincoln Center Theater.  

As a dancer, Curran is known for his early performance work with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, receiving a Bessie award for his role in Secret Pastures, and as an original New York City cast member of STOMP! His works for his contemporary dance ensemble, Seán Curran Company, have toured to nearly 100 venues in the U.S., Europe and Asia with seasons in New York City at Brooklyn Academy of Music, Dance Theater Workshop, The Joyce Theater, The Guggenheim Museum, New Victory Theater, 92nd Street Y/Harkness Dance Project, Danspace Project, Symphony Space, Central Park Summerstage, and Celebrate Brooklyn.

A graduate of New York University, Curran now serves as Arts Professor and Chair of the NYU Tisch School of the Arts Department of Dance. 

Photo credit: David Samuel Stern

Brooklyn-based visual artist and composer Dana Lyn has collaborated with songwriters Stew and Heidi Rodewald, actor-directors Ethan Hawke and Vincent D’Onofrio, performance artist Taylor Mac, and poet Louis de Paor, among others. She has received commissions from Brooklyn Rider, the National Arts Council of Ireland, the Apple Hill String Quartet, violinist Johnny Gandelsman, violist Nicholas Cords, line upon line, A Far Cry, Palaver Strings, and the New Orchestra of Washington. She has written music for documentaries, New York Times’ audio stories, and for dance. Her own musical projects include the sextet Mother Octopus and collaborations with D’Onofrio, guitarist Kyle Sanna, and De Paor. Dana was an artist-in-residence at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in the spring of 2017, a member of the Joe’s Pub Working Group in 2018, and a 2018 awardee of the American Composers Forum Create Commission. Most recently, she was a recipient of a 2020 NYFA Women’s Fund Award for Media, Music and Theater and a 2021 Sundance Composer Lab fellowship. She released her album, A Point on a Slow Curve—a suite of music for septet and four voices, inspired by visual artist Jay DeFeo’s monumental painting, The Rose—via In a Circle Records in February 2022. 

Kyle Sanna’s diverse musical practice includes composition, improvisation, the recording studio, live coding, and the traditional music of Ireland. His compositions have been performed at Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie, the Royal Opera House in Oman, Sydney’s ABC studios, the National Recital Hall in Taipei, New York’s Carnegie Hall, and many points between. WNYC’s New Sounds and Soundcheck host John Schaefer called his music “unconventionally beautiful.” Kyle has received commissions from Brooklyn Rider, The Knights, Palaver Strings, Beta Collide, soprano Danielle Birrittella, and flutist Alex Sopp. Festival acceptances include the International Symposium on Electronic Art, The Oregon Bach Festival, and Art Basel Miami Beach. His “ruminative and shape-shifting” (San Francisco Chronicle) work for string quartet, Sequence for Minor White, won first prize in the 2018 Charlotte New Music Festival Composition Competition. He has arranged music for Béla Fleck, Jan Vogler, Anne Sofie Von Otter, Martin Hayes, and for Yo-Yo Ma on two Grammy Award-winning albums: 2010’s Songs of Joy and Peace and 2016’s Sing Me Home with Silkroad Ensemble. His arrangements have appeared on The Colbert Report, NPR’s Performance Today, and on the Sony Classical, Sony Masterworks, In a Circle, and Naïve labels. In addition to his composing and arranging, Sanna performs regularly as an improvising guitarist with Kinan Azmeh’s CityBand and Ground Patrol, and performs traditional Irish music with the Seamus Egan Project, the Martin Hayes' Common Ground Ensemble, and as a duo with violinist Dana Lyn.

Amanda K. Ringger has been designing locally, nationally, and internationally for over 20 years with artists such as Darrah Carr, Faye Driscoll, Cynthia Oliver, Doug Elkins, Leslie Cuyjet, Molly Poerstel, Laura Peterson, Kyle Marshall, Antonio Ramos, Alexandra Beller, Deborah Lohse, Kota Yamazaki, Sean Donovan, and cakeface, among others. She received a BA from Goucher College in Baltimore, MD and an MFA from Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. She is the recipient of a Bessie award for her collaboration on Faye Driscoll's 837 Venice Boulevard at HERE Arts Center.

Mark Randall is the associate dean and an assistant professor in the School of Design Strategies at Parsons School of Design in New York. He is principal of Worldstudio, a strategy and communications firm that works with non-profit and civic organizations to improve the lives of individuals and communities. Mark is president of Worldstudio Foundation, the first nonprofit in the U.S. devoted to encouraging social responsibility in the design and arts professions. Mark has collaborated as a visual designer with Seán Curran Company for over twenty years, most recently at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival for Abstract Concrete (2018) and Dream’d in a Dream (2015). In 2017, he launched B-Line Ice Cream, sweetened with honey from his own hives. In addition to tasting good, B-Line promotes local beekeepers in upstate New York and educates the public around the critical role bees play in our lives. In 2017 Mark was the recipient of the prestigious AIGA Medal.

Amanda Shafran is an international designer, artist, and teacher based in NYC. Selected NY theater, opera, and dance credits include Ars Nova, The Signature Theater, 59E59, HERE Arts Center, Green Room 42, José Limón Dance Co, and BAM Next Wave Festival. Solo multimedia art shows include Evolution (2016) and FasciaFigures (2014). Regional and international credits include the Kennedy Center and the Beijing Opera. Corporate collaborations include Fox Searchlight Pictures, Amazon Prime, Dover Publishing, Tiffany & Co., L. Delaney Miniatures, and MetaAnatomy. Amanda’s work has been written up in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and NYYogaLIFE. www.AmandaShafran.com.