“When we get the chance to share our experiences here, we don’t have to explain too much. That’s comforting, not having to explain yourself all the time.”
The late-morning sun presses down on Fairview, preparing to lightly sear the North Dublin suburb. Across the street from the Church of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, there is the faint sound of laughter detectable as the roar of a passing bus fades.
The voices travel out from an open window in the courtyard of a former post office. Built in the late 19th Century, the gable-fronted redbrick is now home to the CoisCéim Dance Theatre, with its current residents, Hot Brown Honey, an Australian cabaret troupe.
They are in their second of a six-week creative development process ahead of Dublin’s Fringe Festival. Few of the voices, however, are Australian. Largely, they belong to local performers, recruited to form what the group has dubbed its Dublin Chapter.
The artists come from all disciplines. Among them are Jess Kav, singer and former leader of the band BARQ; Osaro Azam, the founder of the Fried Plantains Collective; and Andrea Williams, a choreographer who has collaborated with such musicians as Denise Chaila, Ed Sheeran and Jafaris.
Titled Hive City Legacy: The Dublin Chapter, the production is a genre-blending piece, combining dance, music, poetry, drama and satire. Running from 9th to 17th September, it is led by a cast of eight women of colour and is billed as a reclaiming of their narratives by exploring how they navigate life in contemporary Ireland.
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As 10.30am comes around, the cast is in the middle of warming up, prepping their reactiveness through a version of handball.
Their day is going to be devoted to the rehearsal of the opening number and the fleshing out of several ideas, some of which only hours ago were loose concepts at best.
It is a collective slog of multidisciplinary artists. Everybody chips in to the writing. Everyone is contributing from their field of expertise. It is essential, because Hive City is being built from ground up.