The Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University has selected two Irish artists – choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan and playwright and screenwriter Enda Walsh – as the recipients of the third annual Meadows Prize arts residency.
Dublin native Michael Keegan-Dolan has been widely referred to as “the most unique choreographic voice to have emerged from Ireland in the last half century.” He is co-founder and artistic director of Dublin’s Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre, an award-winning company launched in 1997. He has written, directed, choreographed and co-produced critically acclaimed works with Fabulous Beast that combine the visual element of dance with the narrative power of theatre. His choreographic works have been produced at prestigious venues throughout Europe and the U.S., including the Royal Opera House in London, Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, and the Houston Grand Opera.
Enda Walsh, also a Dublin native, achieved prominence when he won two prestigious playwriting awards in 1997, the George Devine Award and the Stewart Parker Award, with his play Disco Pigs, a story of an obsessive teen relationship that ends in tragedy. He has since written numerous other award-winning plays, including The Walworth Farce and The New Electric BallrooM. Walsh is also a successful screenwriter; his 2008 biopic, Hunger, told the story of the final days of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands and won a host of awards, including the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Walsh currently lives in London.
The pair will be in residency at SMU at the same time in fall 2012 for four weeks. They will collaborate with SMU theatre and dance students to create a new dance/theatre piece tentatively slated for a major European festival in 2013. The piece also will receive public workshop performances in Dallas during their residency.
“Michael and Enda were nominated separately by two individuals, but we subsequently learned that not only have they known each other for more than 20 years, they were looking for an opportunity to collaborate on a large project,” said José Bowen, dean of the Meadows School. “They are both daring artists with compatible aesthetics, and it seemed a perfect opportunity for our students and for Dallas.”
Inaugurated in October 2009, the Meadows Prize is presented each fall to up to two pioneering artists. It includes support for a four-to-eight-week residency in Dallas, in addition to a $25,000 stipend. In return, recipients are expected to interact in a substantive way with Meadows students and collaborating arts organizations, and to leave a lasting legacy in Dallas, such as a work of art that remains in the community, a composition or piece of dramatic writing that would be performed locally, or a new way of teaching in a particular discipline.
Michael Keegan-Dolan
Born in Dublin, Michael Keegan-Dolan is considered one of Ireland’s most talented, challenging and innovative choreographers, recognized for his ability to fuse the visual immediacy of dance with the narrative strength of theatre. He is co-founder and artistic director of Dublin’s Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre, an award-winning company launched in 1997. Fabulous Beast creates productions that have their roots in Ireland and Irish experience, but deal with universal and often controversial issues in modern society, making them accessible and challenging entertainment for a large audience.
With Fabulous Beast, Keegan-Dolan has created such works as Sunday Lunch (1997), Fragile (1999), The Flowerbed (2000), Giselle (2003), The Bull (2005), James Son of James (2007), and The Rite of Spring (2009), a co-production with English National Opera.
Giselle, The Bull and The Rite of Spring were all nominated for Olivier Awards (the British equivalent of the Tony Awards), and The Bull won the U.K. Critics’ Circle Award for Best Modern Choreography in 2008. That year Keegan-Dolan and Fabulous Beast also received a nomination for the 2009 Europe Prize New Theatrical Realities, the first Irish company ever to be nominated for the prestigious award. Fabulous Beast also won the Judges’ Special Award in the Irish Times Theatre Awards in 2003.
