Luke Murphy/Attic Projects Scorched Earth Residency

Cork City Dance artist in residence, Luke Murphy will spend a month at Dance Cork Firkin Crane completing Attic Project’s latest production, Scorched Earth. The work which will premiere at Dublin Dance Festival in May 2025 is a new dance theatre work for five performers, created by the same team behind Attic Project’s acclaimed multi-award winning production of Volcano.

Written, choreographed and directed by Luke Murphy, Scorched Earth is a collaboration with set and costume designer Alyson Cummins; lighting designer Stephen Dodd; composer and sound designer Rob Moloney and audio visual designer Patricio Cassinoni, produced by Gwen Van Spÿk.

Inspired by the work of John B Keane, Scorched Earth imagines a detective reopening a cold case, an unsolved crime twelve years after the fact. As stories are revisited and old wounds are opened the Detective and Suspect fall into a world of memory, fantasy, ambition and resentment.

As Ireland marks a century of independence the ghosts of our history linger. Ireland is ever more concerned with development and progress, and this progress is ever more defined as built infrastructure. While the pandemic upended common expectations around where we work, live and interact, how the land is used retains its almost gravitational significance.
What right do we have to the land beneath our feet?
What would we do to keep it?

Luke Murphy founded Attic Projects in 2014 as an umbrella for his various independent projects in dance, film and theatre. His work has been supported by various commissions, awards and residencies internationally including Arts Council of Ireland, Culture Ireland, Dance Ireland, Tanz Tendendz Munich, b12 Berlin, DanceBase Edinburgh, Tribeca Performing Arts Centre, NY and others. He is currently Artist in Residence at Dublin Dance Festival 2023-2025 and at Dance Cork Firkin Crane 2024-2046, and has been funded annually by The Arts Council of Ireland's Arts Grants since 2018. His most recent work Volcano was presented by Dance Cork Firkin Crane at the Granary Theatre as part of Sounds from a Safe Harbour Festival to sold out audiences in 2023, at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn in January 2024 as part of the Under the Radar Festival and at Brisbane Arts Festival in August 2024. Volcano continues touring in 2025 including the American Dance Festival, North Carolina.

Scorched Earth is a Co-Production with Dublin Dance Festival and Galway International Arts Festival, funded by a 2025 Arts Council of Ireland Arts Grant Award and further support is from Dance Cork Firkin Crane.