Oisín in Tír na nÓg

This project documents a pivotal moment in the artistic journey of Cian Egan Tormey, a performer and choreographer whose work draws deeply from Irish myth, embodiment, and emotional memory. As part of his Master’s in Performing Arts at the prestigious University of Amsterdam, Cian created an interpretive dance piece inspired by the story of Oisín in Tír na nÓg, the eternal tension between youth and age, belonging and loss, the pull of home and the cost of return.

I filmed the work in Kerry, on the famine roads at Healy Pass, a landscape heavy with history and quiet grief. These roads, carved by hunger and endurance, became more than a backdrop; they function as a living archive, echoing the themes at the heart of the piece. Against this terrain, Cian’s movement unfolds with a striking vulnerability, his body negotiating myth through breath, weight, and repetition.

The soundtrack weaves together the fractured intimacy of CMAT’s eurocountry with the lyrical force of poetry by Ailíse Ní hAodha, creating a layered emotional atmosphere that feels both contemporary and ancestral. Sound, movement, and place collide to produce a work that is deeply affecting, at times tender, at times devastating, and always grounded in a sense of lived experience rather than abstraction.

My approach to filming was guided by a desire to let the land speak alongside the performer, allowing long takes, shifting light, and natural textures to shape the rhythm of the film. The result is a biographical portrait as much as a mythic retelling: a record of an artist in formation, grappling with heritage, identity, and emotional truth.

This film stands as a powerful and emotionally resonant work, created for academic excellence yet rooted firmly in place, history, and the human body, marking an important chapter in Cian Egan Tormey’s evolving practice.