Oona Doherty’s Raw, Honest Dances Have Made Her One of the Dance World’s Buzziest Choreographic Stars
The first time Oona Doherty tried to make her own work, it was on a dare.
She was several years into her performing career, dancing for companies like the now-defunct Dutch dance-theater troupe T.r.a.s.h., and a colleague was trying to steer her towards finding her own choreographic voice.
“All the movement that came out, I couldn’t tell when it was me and when it was T.r.a.s.h.,” she says. “So I started shouting a poem, because I didn’t feel like I could own any of my movement anymore.”
That moment foreshadowed what would someday make her work so arresting and so sought-after: her refusal to compromise with movement that felt inauthentic; her instinctive pull towards the extreme and the subversive. And all that shouting eventually turned into Hope Hunt and the Ascension Into Lazarus. The piece put the Northern Irish artist on the international dance map with its exacting yet loving look at the plight of young Irish men—and its impossible-to-forget opening, in which the character of the Hunter tumbles out of the trunk of a car.
Since Hope Hunt, which premiered in 2015 and has been on tour off and on ever since, the now–38-year-old Doherty has been prolific. She’s made three more critically acclaimed dances, plus multiple films and other projects with artists like Jamie xx. Her latest work, Specky Clark, is set to premiere later this month at the Pavillon Noir in Provence, France. With its nods to Irish mythology and Doherty’s own family history, it will be her most ambitious—and most personal—yet.
Locked In
Doherty’s own origin story also holds hints of the artist she’d become. Born in London, she moved to Belfast at age 10 with her Northern Irish parents. After her first class at her after-school dance program, where Doherty and her fellow students improvised to the Cats soundtrack, the teacher told her she was good. “That was it,” says Doherty. “I was locked in.”
Though Doherty otherwise struggled in school, she excelled in dance and drama. She had highly specific ambitions, which she attributes to “not being good at anything else,” she says. “At 12, I had a plan where I wanted to be a dancer and tour Europe, and then I wanted a choreographer to make a solo on me. Then, I wanted to become a choreographer who would invent a new movement language.”
After secondary school, Doherty studied at the London Contemporary Dance School. “It was ballet and Cunningham, mainly, which doesn’t suit me at all,” she says. “I found that out the hard way.” Eventually, she was kicked out, having developed a habit of skipping class in favor of going to discos.
She finished her degree at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland, then earned a postgraduate diploma in dance performance at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London. Next came her time with T.r.a.s.h. and its aggressive, punk aesthetic, followed by a return to Ireland, where she danced with choreographer Emma Martin. Then, that fateful dare, and Hope Hunt, which found near-immediate success.
Doherty eventually took over the role of the Hunter, a greasy-haired, hypermasculine character who wears a chain and a tracksuit. Hope Hunt—and Doherty’s indelible charisma as a performer—began to earn her serious attention in the dance scene. “She is able to manifest her inner world,” says Sati Veyrunes, who assumed the Hunter role in 2020.
Real, and on the Rise
Several international tours and many awards later, Doherty can no longer ignore her growing fame, as uncomfortable as it may make her. It is both the art and the artist that audiences find magnetic. Her work—whether it’s the Sugar Army of teenage girls stomping their way through 2017’s Hard to Be Soft, or the dancers of 2022’s Navy Blue collapsing to the ground one by one as if shot—has a visceral intensity that can be shocking. She tackles loneliness, addiction, neglect, despair. “She’s willing to look into the darkest corners of our own psyche,” says Richard Wakely, who has presented many of Doherty’s works as the artistic director of the Belfast International Arts Festival.
Yet the vulnerability and empathy that ground Doherty’s unapologetic realness tend to draw audiences closer, rather than scaring them off. “She doesn’t compromise,” says Alistair Spalding, the artistic director of Sadler’s Wells, a co-producer of Specky Clark and where Doherty is an associate artist. “But she’s not trying to push you away—she’s actually wanting you to be a part of this thing.”
Doherty herself is known for being somewhat elusive. But once you get a hold of her, she is intimidatingly direct, and unnervingly perceptive. “She can be really funny, and really deep, and really terrifying,” says Luca Truffarelli, Doherty’s frequent collaborator. “She sees everything; she understands everything. She can read you in a way that you’re like, ‘Oh, I didn’t think I was like that.’ ”
But as in her work, Doherty’s sometimes-brutal honesty comes from a place of care, of seeking deeper connection. “The desire for togetherness that she talks about in her pieces, she really feels it in her own body,” says Veyrunes.
Considering the Future
Recent years have brought changes to Doherty’s personal life. In 2021, she gave birth to her daughter, Rosaria. Last year, she relocated from Bangor, in Northern Ireland, to Marseille, France, citing the lack of support for the arts in Ireland and the challenges of being a single mother and working artist.
It’s been a lonely, challenging move. “I’d live in Ireland tomorrow if I could,” she says. “I don’t want to be here.” But the distance has made her already-fond heart grow fonder. That’s where Specky Clark comes in. “It’s so Irish,” she says. “I’m like those famous Irish writers who’d move away and then write about home.”
She’s also grappling with what motherhood means for her career moving forward. “It was a little bit of a death of ambition,” she says of having a child. “I’m still just swimming in the survival of it.” Any doubts Doherty has about her future in the art form have come from worries about whether it can continue to provide a stable life for her and her daughter. “I always want to make dances,” she says. “I just think it’s kinda scary. The dance career has a different twang to it when it affects your kid.”
Finding the Truth
Doherty rarely sees dance performances these days, and says her influences and inspirations are far more likely to be films. “Dance can be a little bit isolating,” she says. “Maybe I need it spelled out a bit more—something with a bit more narrative makes me feel more comfortable. Being able to chew it properly, rather than pure athleticism and abstraction.”
The power of Doherty’s own work—how it is challenging yet entirely “chewable,” and anything but isolating—lies in her commitment to telling the truth, and helping her dancers do the same. “She allows the contradiction and the inner chaos to come in, and she guides us through it to make it physically precise,” says Veyrunes.
One of her most frequent prompts to dancers is a simple one: “You’re alive.”
The Making of Specky Clark
Specky Clark was the nickname of Doherty’s great-great-grandfather. For Doherty, the name was so evocative that once she discovered it, “that was enough for me,” she says. Specky Clark—which will premiere later this month at the Pavillon Noir in Provence, France—amalgamates tales from Doherty’s family history, Irish mythology, and science fiction, painting a portrait of a boy who has lost his mother and his home.
It’s likely to be a big departure from Doherty’s existing work. She refers to it as a play, and says that other than one “big dance number,” much of the choreography is more like stage directions. “There’s a lot less freedom in it for them,” says Doherty of the cast, which consists of mostly French dancers who are new to her. The piece will also feature music from Lankum, a popular contemporary Irish folk band.
Specky Clark is also more technically demanding than Doherty’s previous pieces, with props and sets and a complex sound design. “I’m possibly overreaching, and it might not work,” she says. “But also, f*** it. I’m going to try, and even if it fails, I’m going to come away with a failure of a show being like, ‘I know about hanging mics now.’ Maybe I just go through this whole process of trying to squeeze into the theater world to realize, ‘You’re a f***ing dancer.’ ”
