Rob Heaslip

Within his professional practice Rob Heaslip is a choreographer, dancer, movement director and teacher creating his own ensemble work, as well as collaborative works.

Rob began his career with the National Folk Theatre of Ireland, training at both the Scottish School of Contemporary Dance and the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at University of Limerick. As an artist he has had a career-long interest in oral and language traditions, performing arts and social, ritual and festive practices, their roles as inspiration for and choreographic agents within his devising process. His practice looks to his own relationship to ICH as the impetus of his creative process, abstracting traditional rites and rituals and then placing them on the present-day stage.

His work identifies as both contemporary and traditional performance. Rob does this to challenge preconceptions that tradition, folklore and heritage are static, un-evolving entities. He believes them to be living, breathing, current cultural movements.