Paidir: Dramatic spoken word and old world music

Siobhán de Paor is a spoken word and performance artist, she blends ritual and art in her works that are powerful invocations for the Ireland of the tomorrow. She is brilliantly bilingual and weaves our native Irish into contemporary, the political and the spiritual in a fresh new way.  She is a cultural revivalist, a mother and a bean an tí/celebrant and her mercurial energy bring entertainment and lightness to a performance that is both prayerful and physical.

Purdie Wood is an old-world vocalist, percussionist and practitioner of traditional wordless song. These wordless melodies are dedicated to bridging the realms of the seen and the unseen. Imbued with the timeless, stirring quality of her vocal tone they give rise to the stories held within the listener. Purdie, who comes from Australia, combines these open-form vocal landscapes with original and re-imagined devotional folk songs accompanied by the Bodhran. Within her shows, Purdie explores the reclamation of the instinctual body and the old ways of pre-colonial culture. With a voice shaped by the bellows of her ancestors, she sings of death, loss, and longing, yet leaves audiences more awake to beauty. Her vocal liquidity resonates through the heart as it reaches back into the depths of time, reacquainting us with a much-needed connection to the earth and the animistic realms.