John Scott Dance and Mel Mercier: Begin Anywhere

Boris Charrion is a French movement and performance artist. He studied at the National Superior Conservatory of Music and Dance of Lyon where he had the opportunity to broaden his artistic horizons, notably through various collaborations with musicians, graphists, composers, and space designers. During his studies there, he has worked with different choreographers such as Eszter Salamon, DD Dorvillier, and Ashley Chen. He was also a member of SUB.LAB.PRO The Ensemble Program in Budapest where he worked with Jenna Jalonen, Máté Mészáros, Barnaby Booth, and Lander Patrick. Since then, he has been working on different projects in Dublin mostly with John Scott, Justine Doswell, and Abby Zbikowski.

Ashley Chen graduated from the CNSMD Paris in 1999. He then danced for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. In 2004, he joined the Lyon Opera Ballet where he performed works by many influential choreographers. Since 2006, Chen has been freelancing throughout Europe with dance artists such as John Scott, Boris Charmatz, and Philipe Decouflé. Chen also makes his own work with Compagnie Kashyl, which he founded in 2012 in Normandie, France. His work has been shown in France, Ireland, and the USA.

Magdalena Hylak is a dance artist based in the West of Ireland. She is currently touring nationally and internationally with John Scott Dance/Irish Modern Dance Theatre (IE) and Nacera Belaza (FR), with over 170 performances in 64 venues across 12 countries to date. Since 2021, she has been developing her own body of work, where she questions the notion of performance. At the core of her research is the movement and sound outside of the question of style/genre or technique. She is the Galway Dance Artist in Residence for 2023-2025. She is the recipient of funding from the Arts Council of Ireland, the Galway County Council, and the National Dance Residency Partnership.

Kevin McNally is an Irish musician with particular interests in Javanese Gamelan, guitar, and community music. As a performer, he has played in traditional Irish music bands and rock bands, and more recently leads a community music project that encourages participatory music sessions in rural areas. He has over twenty years of experience as a music educator and workshop facilitator, creating concerts, installations, and film soundtracks. He is co-director of the Clonakilty International Guitar Festival and assistant director of the Irish Gamelan Orchestra. He teaches Central Javanese Gamelan performance courses at University College Cork and the University of Limerick. www.kevinmcnallymusic.com

Vini Martins, a versatile dancer from Brazil, specializes in Jazz, Jazz Funk, Street Dance, Ballet, and Contemporary styles. He relocated to Ireland in 2024 and has been working with John Scott performing his choreographies, HYPERACTIVE and Actions (NOW). Vini has showcased his talent at Electric Picnic and Funtropolis and is currently teaching Jazz Funk and Femme Style at Drop Studios in Dublin. His diverse experience reflects a strong commitment to dance and artistic expression.

Mel Mercier is a multi-disciplinary, award-winning, Tony-nominated artist with an international reputation as a performer, composer, and sound designer. Renowned as an innovative musician, rooted in traditional music, he is committed to collaborating across art forms, music genres, and traditions. Mel is the director of the Irish Gamelan Orchestra, which released its debut album The Three Forges to critical acclaim in August 2015. In January 2019, his album of theatre scores, Testament, was released on Heresy Records. He is the director of the Irish Gamelan Orchestra, MÓNCKK new music ensemble, and PULSUS, the first Irish traditional percussion ensemble. He was Lecturer/Professor of Music at University College Cork, Ireland, from 1992 to 2016, and Professor/Inaugural Chair of Performing Arts at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick, Ireland from 2016 to 2022. 

Mel was introduced to music by his father, Peadar Mercier, who taught him to play the bodhrán and bones. Throughout the 1980s, Mel and his father performed in Europe and the USA with John Cage and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in their iconic music-dance piece Roaratorio. Mel collaborated as a traditional percussionist with pianist and composer Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin for 40 years. In addition to Irish traditional music, Mel has studied and taught music from Indonesia, West Africa, and India for more than 30 years, and his own distinctive, genre-fluid, cross-cultural musical voice has been forged from these diverse musical elements and more. 

Mel has created music for theatre and dance in Ireland and internationally for twenty-five years, during which time he has worked regularly with leading artists, including Fiona Shaw, Deborah Warner, Phyllida Lloyd, Corcadorca Theatre Company, Gare St Lazare Ireland, and Irish Modern Dance Theatre. He has composed the music for many critically acclaimed theatre and dance productions that have been presented at theatres and venues in Ireland, the UK, Europe, and America. In addition, his large-scale installation projects include: Arcadia, a sound and light installation celebrating nature poetry created with Deborah Warner for Manchester International Festival 2021, and Peace Camp: A Coastal Installation, a sound and light installation celebrating love poetry created with Warner and actor Fiona Shaw commissioned by London 2012: Cultural Olympiad. 

Creative Projects include: Waiting For Godot, Gare St Lazare (Geffen Playhouse, Los Angeles, 2024), Earth SONNET (Song cycle, composed and directed by Mel Mercier, Dublin Fringe Festival 2024), Children of the Sun (Abbey Theatre 2024), Na Piersigh/Persians (Abbey Theatre, 2024), The Quare Fellow (Abbey Theatre, 2023-4), The Tempest (with Deborah Warner, Ustinov Theatre, Bath, July-Aug 2022), Guests of the Nation (co-devised with Pat Kiernan and Kevin Barry, Cork, Corcadorca Theatre Company, June 2022), How It Is - Part 2 (with Irish Gamelan Orchestra and Gare St Lazare Ireland, Coronet Theatre, London, April-May 2022), Portia Coughlan (Abbey Theatre, Feb-Mar 2022), ARCADIA (with Deborah Warner, World Premiere, The Factory, Manchester, July 2021, co-commissioned by Manchester International Festival and Stanford University), and King Lear (with Glenda Jackson, Old Vic, London). Awards include: the Irish Times Theatre Award for Best Soundscape for the Gare St Lazare Ireland production of Beckett’s How It Is – Part I (2018), the Irish Times Theatre Award for Best Soundscape for the Corcadorca production of Caryl Churchill’s Far Away (2017), Gradam Cheoil Award for Collaboration for Colin Dunne’s solo dance show CONCERT (TG4, 2018), New York Festival Bronze Medal Award for his radio documentary, Peadar Mercier (RTÉ Doc on One, 2017), New York Drama Desk Award and Tony Award nomination for his sound score for Colm Tóibín’s Testament of Mary (Broadway 2012), nomination for an Irish Times Theatre Award for the Abbey Theatre/Fibín production of Paul Mercier’s Sétanta, and a nomination for a New York Drama Desk Award for the Abbey Theatre/Broadway production of Medea (2002).

Mick O’Shea is a member and director of the Cork Artists Collective and The Guesthouse Project (www.theguesthouse.ie) and has been instrumental in establishing a vibrant and growing sound art scene in Cork City.  In 2006 he formed The Quiet Club with Danny McCarthy and in 2010 he formed the 5-piece Strange Attractor. He has performed with Rhodri Davies, The Quiet Music Ensemble, John Godfrey, Rajesh Meta, Pauline Oliveros, Karen Power, Steve Roden, Damo Suzuki, David Toop, Stephen Vitiello, Iarla Ó Lionáird, and Jennifer Walshe and has performed in UK, EU, Norway, Tasmania, USA, China, and Japan.

Irish-based Austrian violinist/singer/yodeller and composer Claudia Schwab has performed on numerous recordings and collaborated with a range of cross-genre artists. She has published three CDs of original work in 2014 and 2017, and her latest solo album, “Went To Walk”, was released in July 2024. Her work received a variety of reviews by magazines such as FATEA (“pretty much unforgettable”), Folkworld (“she makes Yodel music modern and happening”), Songlines, and Roots (“crazy and yet strangely attractive”). She has been commissioned to write for the National Concert Hall and has been awarded a Neuer Deutscher Jazzpreise (2019) and a Hubert Von Goisern Förderpreis (2020).

John Scott is a Dublin-born choreographer, performer, founder/Artistic Director of John Scott Dance, dancer from the Dance Festival, and member of Aosdána, an Irish affiliation of Ireland's 250 most outstanding creative artists under the patronage of President Michael D. Higgins. He studied and performed at the Irish National College of Dance/Dublin City Ballet (1982-1985) in works by Anton Dolin, Anna Sokolow, Pearl Gaden, and Babil Gandara. His choreographic works include Migration Sonata, Heroes, Evolutions, Dances for Inside and Outside, Divine Madness, Inventions, Cloud Study, Lear, Fall and Recover, and Actions, performed in Ireland and internationally at New York Live Arts, La MaMa, Danspace Project at St. Mark's Church, PS 122 (New York), Dance Base (Scotland), Festival Racconti di Altre Danze (Italy), l'Espace Culturel Hermine, Les Hivernales, Centre Culturel Irlandais (France), Sounded Bodies Festival, Queer Zagreb (Croatia), Tanzmesse (Germany), and Forum Cultural Mundial (Brazil). He dances in Oona Doherty's Hard To Be Soft and danced in Meredith Monk's Quarry and for Yoshiko Chuma, Sarah Rudner, Anna Sokolow, Chris Yon, and Thomas Lehman. John was awarded the African Refugee Network's Culture Award for his work with refugees and survivors of torture and is a subject of Sadler Wells' 52 Portraits by Johnathan Burrows, Matteo Fargion, and Hugo Glendinning. He has taught at the Irish World Academy, the University of Limerick, The Body in Performance, the Drama Department at NUIG, and Drexel University in Philadelphia.