Luail Ireland's National Dance Company presents Nōs

Luail presents Nōs, a landmark triple bill of internationally acclaimed and defining contemporary dance works by choreographers Akram Khan, Oona Doherty and Liz Roche. Performed by Luail's extraordinary cast of eight dancers, the three pieces move from mythic worlds to raw human experience, revealing dance as a shared act of searching and connection.

Kaash by Akram Khan, first performed in 2002, is an internationally acclaimed work rooted in the rhythmic complexity of Khan's classical background. Exploring cycles of creation and destruction, black holes and mythological gods, the piece moves between the earthly and the transcendent. Meaning “if only” in Hindi, Kaash unfolds within a poetic set design by Anish Kapoor, while a powerful score by Nitin Sawhney responds to the intensity of Khan’s dynamic and highly physical early movement language.

Oona Doherty’s Lazarus (2016) is a bold and deeply affecting work from one of the most vital voices in contemporary dance today. Raw, confrontational, and emotionally charged, it explores masculinity, socio-economic stereotypes, and rebirth with unflinching physicality and humanity.

Completing Nōs are two works from Liz Roche’s 12 Minute Dances (2009): vivid studies in colour, rhythm and emotion, where human embodiment becomes a dynamic, living event.

Set designer Alyson Cummins, lighting designer Sinead Wallace, and costume designer Catherine Fay shape this reimagining of 12 Minute Dances and across the wider production, bringing its three works together as Nōs.

Photo credit: José Miguel Jimenez