Professional Class with Helga Deasy

The class will focus on exploration, play and connection, aiming to foster bodily awareness, to find expressivity and to develop creative skills. We will work with the breath, touch and connectivity within the body and into the ground to open to a state of authenticity and presence. Guided by a choreological approach (the contemporary development of Laban’s principles for the performing arts) we will explore expressivity arising from sensation and intention. Through solo work, partnering and the connection with others we will play with initiating and responding, witnessing and being seen and move towards improvised choreography.

Helga Deasy (Ireland/Germany) is a choreographer, dance artist and dance facilitator. Exploring themes of identity, belonging, migration and care through the immediate expressive potential of the moving body, her practice encompasses performance making, cross-disciplinary collaboration and socially engaged dance. It is grounded in choreological studies and her research into somatic practices and empowerment. She feels passionate about the transformative potential of dance and works in arts and health settings, is a lead-facilitator on the Teacher Artist Partnership Programme and an early-years arts practitioner with Graffiti Theatre Company.

Supported by the Arts Council, Cork City and County Councils and Culture Ireland, she has created a body of work presented nationally and internationally including dance ensemble performance productions, choreography for theatre and site-specific works with a socially engaged focus. Credits include Helica (Laban Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies/New York, West Cork Arts Centre and Dance Cork Firkin Crane, 2018) Of Bluebells and Butterflies (Dublin Fringe Festival, Cork Midsummer Festival and Barboro International Arts Festival for Children 2022) and the critically acclaimed Built on Bridges (Cork Midsummer Festival 2023).

Helga was Dance Artist in Residence with Uillinn West Cork Arts Centre (2017-18), Dance Cork Firkin Crane (2021-23) and Graffiti Theatre Company (2023-24). In 2025 she was selected as a Creative Europe Artist for BABEL – The Art of Listening in TYA.

With kind support from the Arts Council, she currently researches native Irish trees and the Ogham Calendar in an embodied, co-creative process with nature.