CoisCéim Dance Theatre’s Legacy Book

Through investigation of questions around identity, hospitality and sovereignty, CoisCéim Dance Theatre sought to make a massive interdisciplinary project for ART:2023. The resulting artworks, PALIMPSEST – meaning: something that has many different layers of meaning or detail that build on each other – a new dance production choreographed by David Bolger, which was presented at The Complex in March 2024 – and the SPARKING DEBATE project – this had two strands – first, a creative dance project that brought together over 70 participants from four diverse community groups, each representing one of the four provinces, and collectively forming the imaginary fifth province performed at the St Patrick’s Day parade. And second, a live street dance PHYSICAL DEBATE in TU Grangegorman, which was an artistic experiment bringing together 32 dancers who formed crews and debated using their bodies only the above questions through instant dance compositions. 

This multi-faceted project premiered to widespread audience and critical acclaim, connecting with over 850,000 people in a groundbreaking collaboration. The whole project was documented by photographers Ros Kavanagh, Leon Farrell, Sinéad Jerromes and Joanna Prusak. Using these images we designed this ‘Legacy’ book to compliment and commemorate the project. The hardback cover montage uses the images that were projected on the stage from the PALIMPSEST production by their projection designer, Neil O’Driscoll. Inside the book it composes of a specially commissioned essay by writer and broadcaster Vincent Woods chronicling the overall project, the design follows the narrative of the three separate projects, using different papers to denote the separate strands. Overall there is a focus on imagery from the project, quotes from participating artists, and using trace papers as section separators to reflect the meaning of the word Palimpsest. 

This high-quality Legacy publication was printed by Die Keure Printers in Brugge. The book formate is landscape 210x150mm, the cover is 3mm board wrapped with Buckram Light white printed full colour with acqueous lacquer and embossed with a gold foil block on the spine and front. Inside the extent is 160 pages printed full colour on FSC papers – Fedrigoni Lessebo Design Smooth White 130gsm, Sirio 170gsm & 115gsm, and three trace paper wraps using Golden Star K 110gsm are printed one colour. The typeface for the main title is set in a customised version of PF Fuel Decay and the bodycopy is set in Trade Gothic Next. We used the same typography in this book that was used for all of the above live performance project’s various visual communication materials. This project was supported by the Arts Council of Ireland.