Cross-Border, Mixed-Media Dance Exhibition at Strule Arts Centre, Omagh

On Thursday 3 July, Strule Arts Centre, Omagh, hosted the opening of Moving Through and Around, a cross-border, mixed-media exhibition created by Helena Hamilton, Aoife McGrath, Sorca McGrath, and Simon Mills. Developed in collaboration with eight dancers from the rural border regions of Cavan, Fermanagh-Omagh, and Monaghan, the exhibition will remain on display until Saturday 26 July. It is free to enjoy during regular opening hours.

The exhibition offers audiences an opportunity to explore the diversity of dance practices in the border region through sculpture, sound, video, photography, drawing, and movement capture. Inspired by the geological landscapes shaped by water flowing through and around rock formations—both above and beneath the territorial border—it highlights the connections between people and place, expressed through dance.

Featuring styles such as Sean-Nós, hip-hop, Flamenco, set dancing, contemporary, Scottish Country, jiving, and line dancing, the exhibition presents personal, relational, and place-based experiences of dance that are often overlooked in conventional mappings of dance on the island. It reveals an alternative cartography—one that offers a fresh sensory perspective on how dance is practiced, shared, and valued in rural border communities.

Visitors are invited to engage with the exhibition through a visual, sonic, and choreographic encounter that brings them into the rhythm and movement of the region’s dance culture.

Speaking at the launch event, Chair of Fermanagh and Omagh District Council, Councillor Barry McElduff said,

‘Fermanagh and Omagh District Council is committed to promoting equality and good relations for all and this exhibit helps us to achieve this. By working together, you are building a shared space of creativity, research and community expression that is important to promote cultural identity and respect. I would like to commend everyone who has contributed to this exhibition: the artists, the dancers, the researchers, the funders and the communities and encourage everyone to come, to spend time, to bring friends and family.’

Moving Through and Around forms part of Dance Connects in Rural Border Regions, a project supported by Creative Ireland’s Creative Communities on a Shared Island scheme (Creative Ireland Programme, 2023–2027). The initiative connects local authorities in Cavan, Monaghan, and Fermanagh-Omagh with dance practitioners and researchers Professor Aoife McGrath (Queen’s University Belfast) and Dr. Victoria Durrer (University College Dublin). Building on the 2023 pilot project Sites of Significance, Dance Connects uses a creative engagement approach that combines dance practice-as-research with social science. The project aims to foster sustainable cross-border collaboration and inform cultural policy relevant to the unique dance ecology of rural border regions.

For more information, visit www.struleartscentre.co.uk, call 028 8224 7831, or email strulearts@fermanaghomagh.com.